


we miss being ruffians

by napricot



Series: we miss being ruffians [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Another Unfortunate Mustache, Beards (Facial Hair), Blow Jobs, Bucky Barnes & Sam Wilson Friendship, Curtain Fic, Date Nights, Domestic Fluff, Facial Shaving, Fluff, M/M, Painting, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Rappin' with Cap, Trolling, Undercover, Wall Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2018-12-01 14:16:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 62,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11488077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/napricot/pseuds/napricot
Summary: Assorted snippets post-they're gonna send us to prison for jerks, aka an excuse to write whatever self-indulgent nonsense I feel like about undercover as a (formerly mustached) math teacher Bucky Barnes.





	1. Rappin' with the Captain!

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The National's "Guest Room."
> 
> I haven't even seen Spiderman: Homecoming yet, but after reading [this quote from director Jon Watts](http://weheartchrisevans.tumblr.com/post/162327262557/when-i-was-thinking-of-what-would-a-marvel), I was CONSUMED with the thought of how math teacher Bucky would react to seeing Steve's PSAs for the Youths, so this happened while I should definitely have been writing something else. More to follow while I continue to avoid writing the things I should be writing instead.

Detention, Bucky was sure, was more of a punishment for teachers than it was for students. Bucky just wanted to grade final exams in peace during his free period, but Janet from three classrooms down had to frog-march some unfortunate detention-goer down to the principal’s office, and Bucky was the only teacher in the hallway free to keep an eye on the remaining miscreants until she returned. Whatever nonsense had led to the kid getting a personal escort to the principal had the other students in detention riled up, and it took judicious application of his Sergeant Barnes voice to get them all back in line. This quieted the upset to a restive murmur and resentful fidgeting, though the twitchy kid in the back still looked like he wanted to cause some trouble.

Bucky was tempted to just sit in the front and let some of his Winter Soldier menace out, see how long it would take for the room to fall totally silent and well-behaved thanks to the ripple of ensuing fear, but that would probably not be the best course of action for maintaining his cover.

It’d be funny though. Bucky knew for a fact he could ramp it up slowly enough that everyone in the room would suddenly feel very uncomfortable without being able to articulate just why. But as much as he wanted these kids to quiet down so he could finish his damned grading, using any Winter Soldier-related skills just now would be wrong, and overkill besides.

“You’re supposed to turn on the video,” grumbled one of the students.

There was an AV cart with a TV and DVD player on it at the front of the classroom, TV on and paused on a credits frame: A PRODUCTION GRACIOUSLY FUNDED BY THE MARIA STARK ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS. Ugh, kids these days. They got to watch _movies_ during detention? Bucky didn’t remember if he’d ever gotten detention, but he was pretty sure it had involved a more dire punishment than movie-watching. Maybe the students were trying to get a fast one past him. He frowned out at the students, all of them sitting slumped and slouched at their desks, nothing but blank boredom or general teenage angst on their faces. They weren’t fucking with him. So he hit play on the DVD player and went back to Janet’s desk. 

The TV was angled so Bucky could see it even from Janet’s desk at the front of the room, but Bucky ignored it in favor of the pre-calc finals he was grading. Or he ignored it until he heard Steve’s voice, and then he nearly tore a hole in the test he was grading.

To be more accurate, it wasn’t Steve’s voice, it was Captain America’s. To Bucky, there was a fine but significant distinction there. When he looked back up at the TV, there Cap was, wearing a particularly stupid iteration of the stars and spangles suit, and that stiffly earnest expression on his face that meant he was doing his whole buy war bonds thing. Bucky hoped to god this wasn’t a fucking educational program about Cap and the Commandos. Even post-shaving the mustache, no one has said anything about Mr. Murphy’s eerie resemblance to Bucky Barnes, but no matter how dorky his glasses were, someone was definitely gonna notice if they were faced with a photo of World War II era Bucky Barnes right fucking next to him.

_Shit shit shit_ , he thought and tried to slouch behind the desk, but for fucking once his luck wasn’t the worst thing ever, and it wasn’t some documentary. It was apparently, Bucky noted with a rising mix of glee and hilarity, something called “Rappin’ with the Captain!” As best Bucky could tell, it was some kind of educational video and/or public service announcement.

Thirty seconds into the wonder that was “Rappin’ with the Captain!” Bucky had to cover his mouth so the kids wouldn’t look at him funny for smiling like a crazy person. A minute in, Bucky was mentally willing Janet to get back right the fuck now because he needed to get out of here and immediately search youtube for every single awkward and hilarious PSA Steve has done since he was unfrozen, and then text Steve his extensive commentary on every single one. Fuck grading, this was more important. Two minutes in, and Bucky heard Steve motherfucking Rogers utter the words, “Follow the rules, kids,” and he experienced some sort of heretofore unknown to physics time dilation as he was treated to a full-color flashback reel of the immense amount of rule-breaking one Steven G. Rogers engaged in circa 1925-1944.

Was it possible to die of holding in laughter? Bucky was about to find out, probably.

Hypervigilance was good for something, because Bucky heard the clack of Janet’s heels in the hall long before she got close to the door, and he had enough time to dig deep—really, really deep—for enough self-control to plaster an acceptably bland look on his face.

“Thank you Mr. Murphy, I hope everyone behaved while I was gone,” said Janet when she finally, finally walked in.

“Perfectly,” said Bucky, swept up the tests he was supposed to be grading, and strode out of the room calmly. He continued striding down the hallway, past his own classroom, walked confidently into the janitor’s closet just beyond this floor’s bathrooms, closed the door, and then he held his hand against his mouth and laughed as quietly as he could manage, tears streaming from his eyes and steaming up his stupid glasses. Once the worst of it passed, he pulled out his phone and called Steve.

“Hey Buck, everything okay? School day’s not over yet, is it?”

Bucky should have thought twice about calling. He didn’t really have anything to say, he kind of just wanted to have hysterics at Steve about this.

“Steve. STEVE. Stevestevestevesteve.”

“Bucky?” Steve sounded alarmed now, so Bucky tried to gather himself enough to say something somewhat meaningful.

Instead, he giggled, probably for the first time since 1940, and gasped out, “Rappin’ with the Captain!” before sliding down to the floor and laughing.

“Ugh,” said Steve, and hung up on him.

Before Bucky could get it together enough to call him again, Steve called back.

“This is you and that stupid Star-Spangled Man with a Plan song all over again,” he said.

“Uh, no, this is _so much better_ ,” retorted Bucky. “With my own two ears, I heard you tell _impressionable children_ to ‘ _follow the rules_.’ You! Oh my god. I thought I was gonna die trying not to laugh.”

Steve sighed gustily, but Bucky knew he was smiling, the way he often knew things about Steve without quite knowing how or why, and eventually Steve chuckled.

“I did so many of those stupid things, Buck,” Steve groaned. “Where the hell did you see them?”

“They show them to kids in _detention_.”

“Of course they do,” said Steve faintly.

“Those propaganda movies were one thing, Steve, but this shit? What the hell?” Sure Cap was a role model, Bucky got that, and yeah it was hilarious. But he shouldn’t be a _caricature_.

“I know, I know. But it wasn’t long after I—after I got out of the ice, and I was just—it was something to do, you know? The war was over, and you were—it seemed kinda useful, I guess. And I needed something to do.”

Bucky sobered at that. He could imagine it all too well, Steve lost and grieving and lacking anyone to punch. Of course he threw himself into all manner of stupid shit. Bucky frowned, resting his chin on his knees.

“Someone ought to have been there for you,” he said.

“Yeah, well,” said Steve, and Bucky knew he was smiling that awful sad smile, the one that made Bucky’s heart twist in his chest. “I’m not sorry I did those stupid videos.”

“Really? Because I can guarantee you schoolchildren and teenagers across the country think they’re the dumbest shit ever. Those kids in detention looked like they were watching a car crash.”

“The videos made you laugh,” said Steve, low and sweet, a little shy. “So they were definitely worth it. I’ll do a million more if you want.”

Heat rushed into Bucky’s cheeks, and he smiled like it was automatic, even as it felt like someone had just squeezed the air out of his lungs. He knew Steve loved him, knew it like he knew what the warmth of the sun felt like, even after those times when it had been years since he’d last felt it on his skin. And just like with the sun, every time he was reminded of it, he wondered how he could have ever forgotten the feeling, the certainty.

He was silent for a while, like he sometimes was when no words came easily to mind or tongue, and Steve let the quiet ebb and flow between them, like he always did through Bucky’s silences. They could hear each other breathe anyway, so Steve knew he was still on the line.

“I really love you, you know that?” Bucky said eventually.

“I know,” said Steve.

The bell rang, signaling the end of the lunch period, and the end of Bucky’s free period that he should have spent grading.

“I gotta go, but real quick, tell me: did you do a safe sex video? Please tell me you did a—”

Steve laughed, and hung up.


	2. You Played Yourself, Steve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Keep calling me Bucky in public and the mustache comes back.” Steve wrinkled his nose. Bucky scrunched up his face right back. “Listen, it’s one thing for people to look at me and think, ‘hey, that guy kind of looks like definitely dead war hero Bucky Barnes, how weird, maybe they’re related.’ It’s another thing to look at me, think I look like Bucky Barnes, hear my friend named Steve call me Bucky, look at my friend named Steve—”
> 
> Steve winced. “I get it, I get it. Right. No calling you Bucky.”
> 
> It was easier said than done.

“Steve—”

“Hmm?”

Steve didn’t particularly want to move his mouth from its current position. Every inch of Bucky’s skin was pretty damn interesting to him, but right now he was especially interested in the spot where Bucky’s neck met his shoulder. Bucky made some very gratifying noises when Steve applied the right stimulus there, and Steve wanted to know more. He gave an exploratory lick. Bucky let out a muffled moan.

“C’mon, Steve, seriously, I want to talk to you—” Bucky wriggled away from Steve’s mouth and scooted away on the couch, which, _mean_. Steve scooted closer.

“Okay, okay, I’m listening.” Bucky narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “I am!”

“Earlier, when we were getting food, you called me Bucky.”

“Yeah,” said Steve, maybe still a little distracted by the flush on Bucky’s skin. “Wait, do you not want me to call you Bucky?” It was Bucky’s choice, obviously, and Steve would do whatever Bucky wanted, but it was hard to break the habit of a lifetime and switch to James now—

“You can’t call me Bucky in public. Here, at home, it’s fine, but—”

“Oh, the cover.”

“Yeah, the cover.”

“You still call me Steve, in public or not.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “Well I can’t fuckin’ call you Stephen-with-a-ph now can I, Mr. I’m Such a Good Undercover Operative?”

“Right, you’re right, I’ll try to remember,” said Steve nodding.

Bucky took Steve’s face in his big hands, and looked him in the eyes, solemn and pleading. “Steve. Seriously. No calling me Bucky in public.”

“Is it really that big a deal? I don't think people pay that much attention, really,” Steve tried.

“Keep calling me Bucky in public and the mustache comes back.” Steve wrinkled his nose. Bucky scrunched up his face right back. “Listen, it’s one thing for people to look at me and think, ‘hey, that guy kind of looks like definitely dead war hero Bucky Barnes, how weird, maybe they’re related.’ It’s another thing to look at me, think I look like Bucky Barnes, hear my friend named Steve call me Bucky, look at my friend named Steve—”

Steve winced. “I get it, I get it. Right. No calling you Bucky.”

It was easier said than done.

 

* * *

 

 

Despite technically being CO and XO to each other during the war, Steve and Bucky had spent more or less the entire war just calling each other Steve and Bucky still. Sure, they’d used Barnes and Rogers with each other sometimes, and on radios, they’d always stuck to callsigns or last names. But everywhere else? Bucky was Bucky, and Steve was Steve, and if they’d been in any other squad other than the Commandos, it might’ve been a problem, but the Commandos weren’t exactly a normal squad.

They’d managed adherence to protocol around superior officers, but that had just about exhausted their collective capability to call each other anything other than their names, or assorted affectionate insults. Steve half-suspected it had been deliberate on Bucky’s part, calling him Steve more often than not. With so much changed, in such different circumstances, and with Captain America hanging over and shadowing both of them, using the name Steve had been a reminder: _I know who you are, some things haven’t changed, we’ve still got some piece of home with us if nothing else_. His name in Bucky’s mouth still meant home the way little else ever would, and he wanted to offer the same to Bucky, who’d had his name stolen from him for so long.

But Bucky’s cover was important, so Steve had to try. He was just—really bad at it. So bad.

Exhibit 1, the grocery store: “Hey, Buck—buddy! Uh, hey buddy, can you get us some bananas?”

Bucky stared at him, then shook his head very slowly. “Sure thing, _friend_ ,” he said in a tone icier than the freezer aisle. Steve winced.

Exhibit 2, running in the park, where they were always inevitably accosted by assorted dogs who all seemed to unreservedly adore Bucky, which Steve could relate to, but come on: “Aww, your friend is so good with dogs. Do you guys have one of your own?” asked a charmed dog-walking citizen.

“Oh no, not yet, but Bu—Jack’s always been good with animals, I guess.”

“...his name is Bojack?”

Bucky’s head swiveled over from where he had been assuring an ecstatic pit bull that she was the best dog, yes she was, who was the prettiest girl, she was. His flat stare was the _why are you like this_ kind of look that Steve was intensely familiar with, with a side of vaguely Winter Soldier murderousness.

“Just Jack, actually,” said Bucky to the woman, blandly pleasant.

Exhibit 3, the library: “I found that book you wanted, Buuu—uuuddy? Buddy. Pal. Best...friend.”

Bucky turned from where he’d been perusing the shelf of books on...the history of music, it looked like, looked at Steve while he inhaled a very deliberate sort of slow breath. Then he gently took the book from Steve’s hands, and left for the circulation desk. Yeah, maybe Steve deserved that.

Steve really had to get better at this.

 

* * *

 

Steve was in line at Starbucks when he got the idea. The line was obnoxiously long, but he’d promised Sam a dirty chai latte, and Bucky had expressed a desire for a scone, so Steve had offered to make a caffeine and snacks run while Sam and Bucky had “fun” doing forensic accounting. Well, Bucky had fun, Sam and Steve tried not to fall asleep while tracking down HYDRA bigwigs via their byzantine cash and property transfers.

The line inched along slowly, with seemingly everyone having some complex ice blended coffee beverage order. The couple in front of Steve was passing the time engaging in PDA. Steve would have liked to be engaging in PDA with Bucky right about now, even if the only PDA Bucky was comfortable with was holding hands, and that only sometimes. The woman in front of him was doing decidedly more to her boyfriend, and Steve wanted to be annoyed, but there was something sweet in the way she was up on tippy toes to reach her boyfriend’s mouth, the way her fingers played with the fine hair at the nape of her boyfriend’s neck. Her boyfriend murmured _come on, not in line, baby_ — but he kept his hand at her waist, steadying her, and she whispered back _aww, babe, you know you love it_ , and then it was their turn to order and Steve was blushing.

He was blushing, but he had an idea. He stared at the menu on the wall, remembering that first ridiculous coffee order Bucky had requested, back when Steve still hadn’t been sure if he was Bucky or Jack: some hideously expensive quad shot frappucino or something. Bucky, Steve now knew, had been fucking with him. Because Bucky’s usual coffee order was a perfectly reasonable regular coffee, hot or iced depending on his mood, with about six packets of added sugar. Steve ought to get back at Bucky for that, and for all the other little ways he’d messed with Steve during this whole crazy undercover-as-a-math-teacher situation.

And okay, constantly attempting to turn accidental uses of Bucky into buddy was ridiculous, he knew that. But there were other non-name terms that started with a b. Like baby, and babe, as the couple ahead of him had ably demonstrated. And he and Buck were together now, weren’t they? Who could blame a lovesick man for showering his partner with endearments? What a perfect way to keep their cover solid, right?

 

* * *

 

Steve tried it out the next time he was out with Bucky. It was almost the end of the school year, and Bucky had consented to being dragged away from his grading and paperwork for a quick shopping trip to Target. Bucky seemed perfectly content to live in a bordering on barren house, but the whole minimalist aesthetic was less than ideal and downright dire for their bed sheet situation, given their nighttime activities.

“Hey babe, do you want the blue or white sheets?”

Bucky turned towards him from down the aisle where he was poking at towels. “Excuse me?”

Steve hefted both sets of sheets in his hands. “Blue or white?” Bucky narrowed his eyes.

“Blue,” said Bucky, and continued to eye Steve suspiciously. Steve just smiled back and put the sheets in the cart.

Steve almost slipped up in the checkout line, but caught himself just in time. “B—baby, can you grab some gum for me?”

To Steve’s unending delight, Bucky blushed bright red, even as he glared at Steve. It was adorable. He grinned back at Bucky unrepentantly. Bucky grabbed the gum and put it on the conveyor belt, scowling mightily, cheeks still pink. Steve was gonna be in for an earful when they got back to the car, but it was worth it.

In the car, after they’d packed away their purchases, Steve leaned across the seat to give Bucky an apologetic kiss to forestall any kvetching. He expected to get a grudging kiss back, an “ugh you’re awful, but fine,” kind of kiss, but instead Bucky yielded sweetly, then he gently, slowly, deepened the kiss until Steve got that floaty warm feeling that Bucky’s more dedicated kisses always inspired.

When Bucky pulled away, he said, warm and low and a little rough, “Sweetheart,” and _oh_.

One of Steve’s possibly vital internal organs turned to warm mush inside of him, and also, his throat got a little tight, and he had to duck his burning face against Bucky’s shoulder for a few seconds. Bucky let out a little amused huff, but his hand came up to stroke Steve’s hair, and he pressed a kiss to the side of Steve’s head.

Oh _fuck_. Steve had fucked up. Steve was fucked.

 

* * *

 

What Steve had failed to consider was this: Peggy used to, and on good days still did, call him _darling_ and _dear_ and _dearest_ , and it undid Steve a little every single time.

During the war, she hadn’t said it all that often, and certainly nowhere anyone could overhear. When they’d caught a moment alone, she’d say, “Darling, come here,” with those bright and wicked brown eyes of hers, and Steve would flush, which would make Peggy smile, and then they’d go on to thoroughly mess up her perfect red lipstick.

Whether she’d said it with intent ( _stay a little longer, dearest_ ) or with absent-minded fondness ( _can you hand me my stocking, dear_ ), it had left him blushing and tongue-tied. He’d never gotten up the wherewithal to respond in kind, and could never settle on an endearment besides. Steve had thought it was just yet another example of how unrelentingly terrible he was with women in a romantic context. Now he thought maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was just—what was it Sam said about him? _You have no chill, Steve. None._

 

* * *

 

The situation could still be salvaged, Steve told himself. He just had to escalate to more ridiculous pet names, Bucky would do the same, and then it could just be yet another thing they were competitive assholes about with each other, and Steve could avoid this whole unfortunate and inconvenient feelings and no chill situation. He just had to think of other ridiculous pet names that started with a b. Easy.

Steve got as far as buttercup before he had to resort to googling, and then he winced his way through babydoll and baby cakes and beloved. He’d never manage any of those with a straight face. Still, he gamely made an attempt with buttercup, and mostly he just sounded like an asshole. Bucky raised an eyebrow and smirked, but didn’t comment. He didn’t have to. He was practically oozing _is that the best you can do_? 

But Bucky didn’t escalate either, which made Steve suspicious. He’d expected a torrent of over the top endearments: honey pie, stud muffin, sugartits, hot stuff, sexy, whatever else Bucky’s creative and filthy fucking mouth could come up with….but nope, nothing. Steve kept stuttering his awkward way through stilted uses of “baby” in place of Bucky, and while Bucky _did_ keep blushing a little every time Steve did it, he didn’t hit back with any pet names of his own. He was, Steve was sure, biding his time, using that absurd sniper patience of his to wait for the perfect moment.

And of course, because Bucky was the fucking worst, he picked his moment when they were out with Sam and Nat. Nat had rolled into town bearing new intel from Stark and Fury, and they’d spent the day putting together disparate intelligence reports, planning out their next hits against HYDRA. They’d been productive enough that when dinner time rolled around, Steve called it a day and suggested eating at a nearby diner.

Once they were seated in a booth, Steve was assaulted with an almost deja vu-like sense memory of any of dozens of double dates Bucky had set them up on. Only now, this particular double date was in the configuration Steve had always secretly wanted: him on a date with Bucky, their friends with each other.

Bucky thought of it too, because he murmured, “This feels familiar,” as they slid into the booth, his eyes creasing up in a smile.

“Yeah, but I prefer it this way,” said Steve, and took hold of Bucky’s hand under the table.

They all chatted about innocuous, non-Avenging related things while perusing the diner menu: how pizza was a travesty in the midwest and what haircut Natasha should try next and how Bucky’s students were driving him crazy with how restless they were for summer break.

When the waitress came, Steve still hadn’t decided on his order. Bucky, naturally, was ordering a full breakfast for dinner, which Sam disapproved of.

“Brinner is not a thing, dude. There’s breakfast, brunch, lunch, snack, and dinner. That’s it.”

“I’m making it a thing,” declared Bucky. “Double stack of pancakes, home fries, and bacon, please,” he told the waitress.

Sam ordered a burger and fries, and Natasha went with steak, which left Steve, still looking at the menu and undecided.

“Do you need more time?” asked the waitress.

“No, uh, just a second…B—babe, you want to split an order of chili fries with me?”

Bucky made a face and nudged him with his knee. “Can I veto chili fries in general? Because I’m sharing a bed _and_ a bathroom with you, and that’s just—”

“Oh my god, that is not, I don’t—”

Bucky leaned over to look at the menu. “I’ll share an order of garlic fries with you.”

“How is that better? You’re just trading one kind of stinky for another—” Steve said, giving Bucky’s knee a nudge right back.

“If both of us have garlic stink, then neither of us will notice it, and we’ll cancel each other out.”

“Very scientific, Mr. Murphy, I’m so glad you shape young minds.” Bucky just grinned and hooked his ankle around Steve’s. “Fine, can I get the roasted chicken, and an order of garlic fries, please?”

Once the waitress left, they were left to face Sam and Natasha’s raised eyebrows. Natasha looked simultaneously amused and exasperated. Sam was just shaking his head, and giving Steve his _why are you like this_ face. Sam got a lot of use out of that expression.

“Babe? Nice save there,” said Natasha. Steve rolled his eyes.

“Steve, I’m sorry to tell you this,” said Sam, reaching across the table to put a hand on Steve’s arm, “But you are not the kind of person who can pull off calling someone babe. You’re just not. Look into your heart, and you’ll know I’m telling the truth.”

“What’s that supposed to mean!” Steve objected.

Bucky snorted. “It’s that or buddy with this guy, and I’m over buddy. It makes me feel like I’m his golden retriever.”

“Buttercup is still an option, baby,” said Steve sweetly.

“Never in my life have I seen a man who looks so little like a ‘buttercup,’” said Sam. “Don’t tell me you’re getting in on this lovey-dovey nonsense, Jack.”

“ _He_ doesn’t have to remember to use a new name for me,” grumbled Steve.

Bucky pointedly didn’t look at Steve, instead directing a long-suffering kind of glare at Sam and Natasha. “Stephen. With a ‘ph.’ Grant,” he said with perfect tonelessness.

Natasha winced, then smoothed her expression and said, in her bland reporting-to-bureaucrats voice, “Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. A healthy team learns to accommodate its members’ weaknesses while playing to their strengths.”

“Thank you,” said Steve.

“Put Steve in a tight enough shirt and no one notices that he’s terrible at undercover!” Natasha made a scale-weighing gesture with her hands. “Strengths, weaknesses.” Steve threw a balled up napkin at her in retaliation and she grinned, then turned back to Bucky. “Out of curiosity though, Jack, if you did have to call him something else—” started Natasha, and Steve knew, this was it. This was the moment Bucky had been waiting for, dammit Natasha—

And sure enough, Bucky leaned in even closer where he was sitting on Steve’s left side, took hold of Steve’s hand where it was resting on top of the table and laced their fingers together, all the while looking deep into Steve’s eyes. Steve leaned in close on instinct, because Bucky’s eyes were bright and happy and summer sea blue, but oh no. There was a wicked spark of mischief narrowing his eyes and lifting his mouth into a smirk, and that never boded well for Steve’s dignity.

“You know, I think I’d call him sweetheart,” said Bucky, and that wasn’t fair at all, the way his voice went as low and fond and sincere as when he said ‘I love you,’ a tone of voice Steve couldn’t help but associate with their shared bed.

Steve could feel himself turning undoubtedly bright red, and his heart was maybe bursting or melting, he couldn’t tell, and also, he couldn’t look away from Bucky, whose mischief had faded in favor of nothing but open affection. Bucky leaned in for a quick kiss, but Steve caught him before he could pull away, and kissed him for a long, helpless moment. Necking in a diner booth was probably not a thing two grown men should have been doing. Steve didn’t really care.

A spray of cold water to his face made him jerk back. “You are in public, lovebirds!” said Sam, then flicked more water at them. Bucky just laughed, and leaned back, smug little grin on his face and eyes sparkling.

Natasha sat back on her side of the booth with an incredulous look on her face. “Wow.”

“Anyway, if I shared Steve’s unfortunate inability to remember a cover name, I _would_ call him sweetheart, if only _that_ didn’t happen every time,” said Bucky. “It’s not real conducive to maintaining a cover or mission readiness.”

“Very romantic though,” noted Natasha dryly, and Bucky shrugged.

Steve narrowed his eyes at Bucky. Ha. So _that_ was how Bucky was playing this. This was 1929 and the battle of whose excuses worked best on Sister Joan all over again. “I can too maintain a cover.”

“Uh huh. Sure.”

“Natasha, back me up on this one, I learned it from you: public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable!” Now Bucky’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “You know, because people get uncomfortable and look away. So, really, who’s doing a better job maintaining our cover? Me, that’s who.”

Bucky squinted in thought, opened his mouth as if to argue, then closed it again.

“This wasn’t exactly how I pictured you implementing that particular lesson, but, okay, sure,” said Natasha.

“It does make a certain amount of sense…I guess,” said Sam to Bucky.

“Ha! I win!”

“If you say so, sweetheart,” said Bucky, and goddammit, Steve felt his face heat up again and his lower spine turn into tingly jelly while his pulse kicked up a few happy notches. Bucky, Steve was sure, could feel it, though he didn’t say anything else, just squeezed Steve’s hand.

Yeah, maybe Bucky had won this round. And maybe Steve didn’t mind that so much.


	3. Get in the Car, Loser

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You owe me a car,” declared Sam.
> 
> “Yeah, I do. Wanna go buy one? I have access to a lot of HYDRA blood money, I can get you a really nice car.”
> 
> AKA an excuse to write Sam and Bucky bonding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content note: Bucky talks a little about the early stages of his recovery, so standard Winter Soldier trauma umbrella warning there.

When Sam tried to pinpoint just when and where his life had veered off into crazy territory, past the point of normal life return, he usually placed the moment at the exact second when he decided to let a dirty and battered and on the run Captain America and Black Widow into his house. On sleepless nights, lacking anything better to occupy his mind with, he liked to argue with himself about it though. Like, maybe that wasn’t it, maybe he could have let them in, given them breakfast and a place to clean up, then sent them on their way. Maybe instead the moment was when he pulled his EXO-7 file out and offered to help them take down Insight. Except, no, that could still just have been Sam doing his patriotic duty. No, maybe it was when he decided robbing Fort Meade to get his wings back was a reasonable thing to do. Or getting back in the air to take out one of the helicarriers. Or helping Steve with the search for the Winter Soldier, formerly known as James Buchanan Barnes.

 _Nah_ , said the voice of Riley in his head. _It was when your crazy ass got read in to an experimental program to stick winged jetpacks on a pararescue and decided, yeah, you wanted a piece of that dangerous as hell action_. And maybe the memory of Riley wasn’t so wrong about that.

Now Sam thought, no, none of those moments were it. Those were just the appetizers, the last mile markers before the exit to Crazytown, and when he got off that exit, it headed straight into a HYDRA operation hidden in an old mine, where fucking undead Nazis were shambling around, and where the Winter Soldier’s mask got ripped off to reveal Sam and Steve’s ill-advisedly mustached math teacher neighbor. That was when Sam had realized that shit was weird, and it was only ever going to get weirder from there.

 

* * *

 

Hilariously and infuriatingly unexpected undercover math teacher situation aside,Sam was still the least emotionally compromised person available, and someone had to make sure Barnes wasn’t more assassin than mild-mannered high school teacher. Plus, as the only thing approaching a medical and mental health professional available, he couldn’t help but feel a little responsible for making sure Barnes was okay, or as okay as he could be. So Sam gathered the tattered shreds of his Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes related plans together. From what Barnes had said so far, he was dealing alright, but Sam worried that there was a deep hole of not-at-all-okay that Barnes could trip into at any time.

While Steve was off showing Natasha the zombie mine, Sam was going to take this opportunity to have some real talk with Barnes.

“So, you seem very sane,” said Sam while Barnes was doing some teacher shit at the kitchen table.

“Thank you,” said Barnes solemnly. “I worked very hard on that.”

Sam honestly couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. “Worked very hard on _seeming_ sane, or on _being_ sane?”

Barnes tilted his head, looked off into the middle distance in a considering sort of way. “One sort of followed from the other.” Yeah, that was maybe fair. Fake it ‘till you make it and all, Sam had done his fair share of that.

“Listen, real talk, you have been through some shit. I used to be a peer counselor at the VA, talked to vets about, y’know, their shit. And you are way beyond my pay grade, but I have to ask: how are you…handling all this?”

The expression on his face stayed bland, but Barnes’ shoulders went tense. “All this?”

“The unimaginable amounts of torture and memory wiping and being brainwashed into killing people. Also, navigating the future. And Steve.”

“I don’t wanna talk about the unimaginable amounts of torture and memory wiping and being brainwashed into killing people,” said Barnes in a flat voice. “Future’s fine, I read a lot. Steve’s great.” Barnes’ face softened into a bright-eyed little smile at the mention of Steve, which Sam was maybe a little touched by, but the relevant part of this answer was the first sentence.

“Yeah, I know you don’t wanna talk about it, who the fuck would, but you ought to talk about it with somebody.”

“Who?”

“Not me,” said Sam automatically. “But, uh, a therapist or a psychologist—”

Barnes shook his head. “Who would believe me? And I can’t talk about—no.”

“Listen, I just need to know you haven’t spackled over a yawning void of crazy with a thin veneer of functioning. You’re not with HYDRA, you’re not murdering people left and right, that’s great, those are genuine fucking accomplishments. But Steve thinks the sun shines out your ass, and he might want you to be okay more than you actually are okay. So tell me: right after the zombie mines, you said you’d spent the past couple years dealing with your ‘trauma, amnesia bullshit.’ How’ve you been dealing?”

Barnes set his pen down, and looked Sam in the eye, calm and even, but there was pain there too, deep and ragged.

“I waited some of it out. My head was a fucking mess right after Insight. I went to ground, holed up until the withdrawal from the drugs HYDRA had me on passed. Then some of my memories started coming back, but it was all—everything happening, all at once, no context. And it hurt. I don’t—” Now Barnes’ eyes went distant, and he frowned. “I can’t tell you what happened then. I don’t know. Everything hurt. I had a lot of seizures, probably. I think everything was rearranging in here, trying to heal from all the wipes. I could feel it, like when my bones healed, or—anyway, my head was clearer after that.”

“And you just—rode all that out. Alone. Jesus, man, you should have been in a hospital—”

“Right. Doctors, medical—that’s gone well for me,” said Barnes with a glare. “I managed. And I tried to work past the HYDRA bullshit to remember—” Barnes was wringing his hands now, breathing a little fast. “I don’t think I can—” he said, then cut himself off, swallowed hard.

“Hey, take a minute,” said Sam as gently as he could. “You don’t have to—this can wait, alright? I’m not forcing you here, we can talk more later.”

Though Sam wasn’t sure they needed to talk more, he was getting the picture pretty well. Sam and Steve had spent the better part of two years trying to find Barnes, and they’d considered a lot of possibilities for just what Barnes was up to while he was on the run. It wasn’t much of a surprise to find out that Barnes had spent a good portion of the time dragging himself out of hell, then clawing out of what amounted to his own grave after that. He got why Barnes had done it on his own, but it made Sam’s heart hurt to think of it. Too many vets tried to go through shit like this alone, and they ended up on the streets, or worse.

Sam had tried dealing alone, after Riley. It hadn’t gone well.

“I don’t know what you want me to talk about. I know what they did to me, and I know what I did, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do but try to bear all of that and live with it. Try to fix what I can, try to—try to be safe. That’s all I’ve been doing. Is that—does that count as okay? I don’t know.”

Barnes’ voice had gone low and shaky, but he got all the words out, and now he was blinking fast, staving off tears. He was shaking a little too, like he had when he’d tried to tell Steve and Sam why he didn’t want to fight anymore. It made Sam want to hug him, take hold of his hands, something, anything to steady Barnes. That probably wouldn’t be well-received from anyone but Steve though.

Instead, Sam just said, “Yeah, I think that counts, Barnes.”

Barnes nodded, clenched his eyes shut, and breathed in and out, still too fast, but clearly trying to calm down. Sam set the pace with deep breaths of his own, hoping Barnes would hear and follow, and they breathed together like that until Barnes had steadied.

“I’m sorry,” said Barnes eventually.

“What for?” asked Sam, genuinely confused. He was the one who’d pushed Barnes, knowing he might upset him.

“Those times I tried to kill you. Wrecking your wings. And for your car.”

“You weren’t exactly yourself, I think I can forgive—Wait, my car? What did you do to my car? I swear to god, Barnes, if your bullshit grandma-style parallel parking means you dinged my car—”

“Uh, no, I meant the, uh. Steering wheel on the freeway thing? I think? I don’t remember that so great, they wiped me right after, but I think I—wrecked your car.”

“Oh, right. That.” Yeah, Sam generally tried not to think about that, on account of it being a nightmare scenario out of the world’s worst Fast and the Furious movie. He narrowed his eyes at Barnes. “What is with you and wrecking my cars?”

“I haven’t wrecked your current car, jesus christ—”

“You park, like, a millimeter away from the bumper!”

“Uh huh. But I don’t _hit_ the bumper, do I.”

“You owe me a car,” declared Sam.

“Yeah, I do. Wanna go buy one? I have access to a lot of HYDRA blood money, I can get you a really nice car.”

Sam held his fist out for a fist bump. “Yeah, get that money, Barnes.” Barnes fist bumped back. Steve might get all disapproving about it, but as far as Sam was concerned, HYDRA’s ill-gotten gains were fair game, and Barnes of all people deserved to do what he wanted with the money. “We’ve got a cover to maintain though. Can’t be getting a Lamborghini or something.”

“They have nice new all electric cars, don’t they? Those aren’t too flashy.”

Shit, Barnes was serious. “How were you planning on paying for this? Yeah, HYDRA money, got that, but like, are we gonna roll up with a suitcase full of cash? We gotta stay low profile.”

“Hmm. Give me a few days to move some money around,” said Barnes, and then Steve was at the door with Natasha, and Sam figured that was the last he’d hear about a new car.

 

* * *

 

That was not the last Sam heard about getting a new car.

Natasha and Steve were making a lot of calls trying to get an op set up to take out Strucker, and Sam was at loose ends, so he figured he’d make their lawn look a little more respectable. The old lady a few houses down had been giving them disapproving glares for the past week, and their cover did not need a nosy old lady telling them to mow their admittedly scraggly lawn.

Sam was halfway done when Barnes rolled up in his utterly forgettable Corolla, rolled down the window, and said, “Get in loser, we’re going car shopping.”

“What.”

“I owe you a car, don’t I? C’mon, we’re gonna go buy one.”

“Okay, first of all: when the hell did you watch Mean Girls? Second of all—” Sam didn’t have a second of all. He would really like a nice new car. It would probably get wrecked in some superhero shenanigans, but hey: free car.

Barnes raised his eyebrows over his douchey aviators, waiting for the second of all. “I don’t have a second of all,” admitted Sam, and got in the car.

“So, know what kind of car you want?”

“What’s my budget here?”

“Anything under $100,000, that’s all I moved into the account for this,” said Barnes.

“That’s insane.”

“You said nothing flashy, I know, but—” Barnes shrugged. “I did wreck your wings too.”

“You gonna buy me a plane?”

Barnes didn’t skip a beat. “Do you want a plane?”

“Not really. I mostly just like flying with the EXO pack.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright. Technically I stole the wings anyway,” Sam confessed.

“What?”

“It’s not like the Air Force let me keep them when they discharged me. Me, Steve, and Nat stole them from Fort Meade for the whole Insight thing.”

Barnes looked weirdly scandalized. “Steve is _such a bad influence_ , I swear to god.”

 

* * *

 

All the car dealerships were clustered together, so Barnes drove to the general area and let Sam pick a dealership. Like any number of red-blooded American males too easily swayed by advertising, Sam had in fact put some thought into the car he’d want if money was no object, so he directed Barnes to the Porsche dealership.

Sam stopped Barnes before he got out of the car. “So, how am I paying for this?”

Barnes pulled a folded up check from his pocket: it was a cashier’s check for ten grand. “Here’s your down payment. You get whatever financing deal they offer you, great credit score by the way—”

“Wait, what, when did you—”

“And then in a month or two, you, or really I, pay off the whole loan. Cover maintained, no uncomfortable questions.”

“Uh, okay,” said Sam. Sam was going to trust that Barnes knew what he was doing.

They managed to wander around the lot for a few minutes before a salesman zeroed in on them like a shark.

“Gentlemen! How can I help you?” Of course, he directed the question to Barnes. Not a great start. Sam narrowed his eyes at the guy.

Barnes gave the salesman a polite smile and pointed at Sam. “He’s looking for a new car.” The salesman shifted gears with admirable speed, and just about steamrollered Sam with customer service.

As tempting as all the sports cars and convertibles were, Sam had to be a little more practical, so after a few longing looks at the sexy two-seaters and low-slung sports cars, he directed them over to the SUVs. He was probably going to be carting around a pair of super soldiers and a lot of weaponry for the foreseeable future, a fast SUV seemed like a smart pick. He ended up admiring a sleek, silver SUV, hybrid gas and electric, with all the fancy upgrades inside.

“Yeah, I want this one. I am gonna be pulled over so fucking often, but I want this one.”

Barnes tilted his head, brow furrowing in confusion. “Why would you be pulled over?”

Sam was about to get annoyed, but then he remembered, _oh right_. Barnes was from ye olden times, and had amnesia besides. He maybe hadn’t had a chance to catch up to modern race relations. “Driving while black.” The salesman laughed uncomfortably, then shut up quick after Sam glared at him.

“Oh,” said Barnes, then he peppered the salesman with questions about the car: safety ratings and mileage and once Barnes got to asking about where the damn car was manufactured, Sam cut in and asked for a test drive.

“It’s like a spaceship,” he said in hushed tones as he pulled out of the lot. Barnes made an offended and disgusted noise from the backseat.

“It doesn’t _fly_ , why don’t any cars fly,” he grumbled. Sam glanced in the rear view mirror and saw Barnes fiddling with buttons back there. “It has heated seats,” he said in a reverent tone.

“Okay, well you’re clearly gonna live in here now,” muttered Sam. Once he stopped at a light, he turned to the salesman. “I’ll take it. But if signing the paperwork and getting the keys takes any longer than an hour, I’m out.”

It took 45 minutes, because Sam’s credit really was excellent, and Barnes made judicious use of his dead-eyed Winter Soldier stare to hurry things along. They got back to the house in time for dinner, and Sam decided to live dangerously and park in the forbidden driveway. Steve and Nat were still holed up in what passed for their command center in Bucky’s garage.

“Hey, where’ve you two been?” asked Steve.

Barnes went over to him peer over his shoulder at what he was working, pressing a kiss to his temple on the way. Sam quietly boggled. It had been a little over a week, and Steve and Barnes were already at the old marrieds stage, only with a bonus honeymoon glow that could rival a supernova. It was simultaneously heartwarming and unnerving.

“I bought Sam a new car,” said Barnes.

“What?” Steve twisted around to look at them both.

Barnes gave Steve a guileless look. “I owed him a car.”

“Yeah, Steve, he owed me a car. Remember? DC, freeway, the violent removal of my entire steering column by the Terminator over here.”

“Is the bank of justly re-appropriated HYDRA funds and buying forgiveness open, because if so, I have some requests,” said Natasha.

“If your requests cost about $10,000, then yes.”

Natasha made a disappointed noise. “You can’t buy much hookers and blow with that at all.”

Steve rolled his eyes while Sam and Barnes snickered, and they all trooped outside to admire Sam’s excellent new car. Steve and Natasha made the appropriate appreciative comments, while Natasha examined every nook and cranny.

“You’re gonna have to let me make some security modifications,” she said, then, “Ooohh, heated seats.”

Sam looked over at Barnes, who was relaxed and amused as he watched Steve and Natasha examine the car. Steve had a look on his face stuck between being impressed and disapproving of the indulgent purchase. Looked like those Depression-era instincts were rearing up in him. Barnes hadn’t blinked at any of the expense though, so either he really didn’t give a damn how the HYDRA money got spent, or amnesia and brainwashing had wiped out any adherence to Depression-era self-deprivation.

 _I should offer some positive reinforcement for this attempt at making amends for the past_ , thought Sam. Also, a tiny part of Sam thought this car was worth those moments of pants-shitting terror on the freeway.

“Thanks, Barnes,” Sam said quietly.

“You’re welcome,” Barnes answered, then he breathed out a barely there laugh, though his eyes were sad. “This was an easy thing to make right. None of the rest of it is.”

“You’re doing alright, Barnes. Really.”

Barnes gave him a tired smile. “Call me Bucky, when we don’t have to keep up the cover. My name is Bucky.”

It was a wholly different introduction than the one they’d had a couple months ago, when Sam had barely paid any attention to Neighbor Jack, and more different still from the violence that passed for their first meeting. Sam liked this one better.

“Nice to meet you, Bucky Barnes.”

 


	4. baby, we'll be fine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hey, I’ve been wondering: how did you end up being a math teacher for your cover?”

“Hey, I’ve been wondering: how did you end up being a math teacher for your cover?”

They were lying in bed, Bucky half on top of Steve while he read a book and Steve idly scrolled through news on his tablet. It was a routine they’d pretty swiftly fallen into: lying together in the warm, dim light of their bedroom, sometimes talking, sometimes just being quiet together while they read. Usually their books or tablets would get pushed off the bed at some point, and their hands would wander to decidedly more interesting occupations. They hadn’t reached that point yet this evening though. Right now, Steve was running his free hand through Bucky’s hair, which was pretty detrimental to Bucky’s efforts to stay awake and finish his book.

“Hmm? Oh, it’s not actually that interesting,” he said, because it mostly wasn’t. It had been luck and convenience, mainly, plus it turned out that teaching kids math was one of those things he was inexplicably good at for reasons he couldn’t quite remember, and there were precious few of those skills that weren’t tied to violence and tradecraft.

Steve tugged at his hair gently, making Bucky shiver with pleasure. “C’mon, tell me.”

“Alright,” said Bucky, and set his book down. It was easier to talk without looking at Steve, so he threw an arm around Steve, and settled himself against Steve’s chest. “So there was this HYDRA base under a high school out in Oregon. Literally under it, as in, couldn’t access it through anywhere other than the school’s basement. Now, I needed access to that HYDRA base, and I also needed to see if that high school was some kinda HYDRA front, or what. I dunno if you noticed or not, but folks are pretty big on security in schools nowadays, so I couldn’t just lurk around the place without being mistaken for some creepy lecher, or a crazy who’s about to shoot the place up.”

“A whole high school as a HYDRA front?” Steve’s voice rumbled pleasantly against Bucky’s cheek where he was resting on Steve’s chest.

“Hey, you never know. I did manage enough surveillance to figure that the kids were, you know, normal, real high school kids. So I needed to get into the school to see if anything else was going on with the staff, and I definitely can’t pass for a student—”

“I dunno, look at that baby face,” Steve teased and pinched his cheek. Bucky slapped his hand away.

“Fuck off, I swear I lost all that baby fat during the war. Anyway, I thought I could go in undercover as a janitor. It’d be perfect: no one notices the janitor, and it’s not weird when you see them all over the place. But that meant getting rid of the current janitor—”

“Bucky!”

“Not killing him, geeze! I thought I could have him slip and fall, get hurt just enough to take a few days off, or get him to go out of town, but then I saw the guy had a family, and a sick wife, and he was the only one bringing in money. So I couldn’t, because what if he didn’t get his job back?”

“Aww, Buck.”

“Shuddup. So then I figured I could get in as a substitute teacher. They always need those, and I’d just have to fake the papers for it, then sit in on some classes, no real teaching necessary, and I could do recon when I wasn’t in class.”

“And you ended up being good at it. Teaching, I mean.”

“Yeah. I guess. I subbed for an algebra class, and the kids were supposed to just sit there and do their worksheets. Some of ‘em needed help, and I just—helped them. I knew the math, so why not, right? And it felt familiar, even if I couldn’t remember why.”

“Do you remember why now?”

Bucky laughed without much humor, more sad than bitter. “No, actually.” He swallowed, turned his face into Steve’s chest. He was used to it by now, more than used to it, this knowing without knowing, fact without evidence. It was even a comfort sometimes, mostly when it came to Steve: that the specifics could elude him, but the certainty would stay. That his body knew Steve and eased some of its perpetual tension in Steve’s presence. That he loved Steve. “Do _you_ know why?” he asked Steve softly.

Steve pressed a kiss to his head. “Yeah, I know,” said Steve just as softly, and so damn gentle. “You used to help your sisters with all their homework. And you got me through high school math. No way I would’ve passed otherwise, not with all the days I missed, and god, I was a fucking awful student. No wonder you’re good at it now, you got to practice on me, and I was the actual worst. You were always so damn patient.”

“You couldn’t’ve been that bad,” protested Bucky.

“I threw my workbook at you a couple times.”

Bucky smiled a little, but no memory stirred, other than the faint recollection of sitting at a kitchen table. That was alright though. Steve knew, and Bucky could at least be sure now that this particular skill was all his: not the war’s, not HYDRA’s. Just his. He held on to Steve a little tighter and let Steve’s heartbeat steady him, while Steve stroked a hand in long, easy sweeps up and down his spine.

After a long but comfortable silence, Steve asked, “So what was up with the school?”

“Oh, there was this ancient woodshop teacher who was a literal war criminal, used to be HYDRA. He was running some HYDRA intel and data ops through the school. I got what I could from the base, then cleared it out, and the teacher got picked up by the feds thanks to an ‘anonymous tip.’ Like I said, not that interesting.”

“You liked it enough to choose teaching as your cover again, though.”

“Yeah. I read up some on, y’know, proper teaching, and I figured it’d be a good cover when I had to stick around Cleveland for a while. No one’s gonna expect the Winter Soldier to be teaching high school math, right? And HYDRA wouldn’t think to look for me in a high school.”

Bucky was aware that he was leaving a lot out here, smoothing over what had actually been a pretty fraught decision. A selfish decision, in a lot of ways. There were any number of anonymous jobs he could have picked up, jobs where the only requirement was showing up on a reasonably reliable basis, jobs that didn’t require much in the way of effort from him. He could have avoided working at all. He’d socked away more than enough of HYDRA’s ill-gotten gains to live on, and taking out HYDRA and getting his head right took up enough of his time. But all those other jobs that made up the cash-only, under-the-table underbelly of the economy used some piece of the Winter Soldier’s skills: his strength to work a construction job or manual labor, his fighting skill to be a bouncer or security guard, even his uncanny speed with knives to be a cook.

Being a substitute teacher for a couple weeks though? That had been something else, something new. Something seemingly entirely different from who the Winter Soldier had been, or even from Sergeant Barnes. There were no mental mines to trip over, no ghosts from his past, save for those he carried. So when it had come time to run some more long-term missions from a stable base, when he was sure he was steady enough, Bucky had chosen teacher as his cover. He’d built Jack Murphy’s identity meticulously, and maybe he didn’t have time to get the degree Jack Murphy’s fake papers said he had, but he could damn well read up enough to make a good show of it. He did well enough to get hired, anyway.

“You really are good at it, you know,” said Steve. “Teaching. I’m glad you found something…normal like that, I guess. Something that has nothing to do with the war, or HYDRA. You deserve that.”

Bucky didn’t know about that. He was pretty sure he _didn’t_ deserve it, actually. But it didn’t involve hurting anyone, and he could do some small amount of good. He could walk into that classroom and be pretty sure the worst thing that could happen to him, to anyone else, would be some surly adolescent misbehavior.

“You deserve that too,” Bucky said, then sat up to look at Steve’s face. Steve had that tender expression he so often had when Bucky caught Steve looking at him: tender as in loving, but tender like a bruise too. Bucky never really knew what to do about it. For now, Bucky kissed him, and Steve sighed sweetly into it. “When’s the war gonna be over for you, Steve?”

“Not yet,” murmured Steve. “You know why.” Bucky frowned, because yeah, he knew, but HYDRA wasn’t just Steve’s fight. Steve kissed him before he could work up a proper argument about it. “I promise it _will_ be over though. And then I’ll…I don’t know, join you at the high school as an art teacher? Don’t laugh! I could totally be a high school art teacher!”

“Uh huh, sure. Whatever you want, sweetheart,” said Bucky, playing dirty now. As expected, Steve went red and got a pretty hilarious soppy look on his face. “Hey, you could do more educational videos—”

Steve stopped that line of career counseling with another kiss, before making thoroughly sure that all thoughts of career counseling and wars that didn’t end and educational videos left Bucky’s head under the gentle and maddening onslaught of his lips, and his hands.


	5. we'll smash the walls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hey,” he said faintly. “Uh, you grew a beard?”
> 
> “Oh! Yeah, jeez, forgot about that. Yeah, the history classes are about to start a World War II unit in a week or so, and the Commandos are gonna feature pretty prominently in the lesson plan, apparently. Thought I’d play it safe.” He rubbed at the beard self-consciously. “Does it look awful? I mean, I know it’s not worse than the mustache, but—”
> 
> “It looks great,” Steve blurted out. “It looks—really, really good, Buck,” he said with hushed fervency.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [RIP Sebastian Stan's beard ;_______;](http://fysebastianstan.tumblr.com/post/163803349977/danifuhrich-hello-upper-east-siders-carter-is) [Gone](http://sebastiansource.tumblr.com/post/163541081919) [too](http://kittyseb.tumblr.com/post/163528257595) [soon](http://sebastiansource.tumblr.com/post/163302035009/confusedmuscles-poolside-chillin-w).
> 
> This snippet is set after the start of the new school year, a few months later than the other ones, which were set at the tail end of Bucky's first year teaching/the beginning of summer. I'm probably going to end up jumping back to the summer with later snippets. Also, the rating is now E thanks to this chapter.

Bucky was in the teacher’s lounge attempting to coax some slightly less vile coffee from the ancient coffee machine when he felt the first stirring of intense regret, and even alarm, at having shaved his stupid mustache off all those months ago.

He had the latest memo from admin and he wanted to sit at the lounge’s one table and read it while he drank his awful coffee and avoided the passing period rush in the hallways, but one of the history department teachers (Mr. Ireland, maybe?) was sitting at the sole table in the teacher’s lounge, printouts and books spread out all around him. He looked up and grimaced at Bucky.

“Sorry, sorry, my desk in the classroom is kind of a mess and I needed the room.” He shuffled some of the printouts around and left Bucky a clear space. Bucky peeked at one of the printouts: _A TIMELINE OF THE HOWLING COMMANDOS’ OPERATIONS IN THE EUROPEAN THEATER._ Bucky’s stomach dropped. _Shit_.

“What’re you working on?” he asked as casually as he could manage.

“Oh, I’ve got World War II coming up on the syllabus in a week or so, I was thinking I’d rework the old lesson plans, work more in about Cap and the Commandos. Kids are more interested, now that Cap’s back from the dead and all, and the Commandos give a nice entry to talking about some interesting social stuff. First integrated unit and all…”

Bucky hummed in agreement and tried not to panic. Ireland flipped a page in the book he was looking through, and there was a picture of the Commandos, Bucky included. _Glasses cannot possibly be a sufficient disguise_ , thought Bucky with a little hysteria. He hid his face behind his coffee cup. _Why had he shaved the mustache off, why_. Oh right, he’d been thinking with his dick and/or making some romantic fucking gesture or whatever, christ.

Ireland flipped another page in the history textbook. There was a whole inset about Bucky. What the fuck. _Why_.

“Hmm, maybe I can assign an essay, have the students write about a Commando of their choosing and what their post-war experience says about American or European society…” muttered Ireland, then he looked at the inset with the frankly too-large picture of Bucky’s face. It was a good picture, at least. Not that that helped him right now. “Or not, poor Sergeant Barnes didn’t get a post-war experience.” Ireland looked up with a wry smile.

Bucky could say a lot of things about his post-war experience, none of them fit for the tender ears of teenagers or this middle-aged history teacher. It would probably be pretty illuminating as to the causes of the Cold War though. HYDRA had worked both sides of that. He kept his coffee cup glued to his lips instead. Ireland looked at the inset again, then looked up, squinted at him a little. Bucky tried to look less like…himself. He only succeeded in steaming his glasses up. _Fuck_.

“Anyone ever tell you that you look a little like Barnes?”

“Oh, a couple times,” said Bucky vaguely. “Uh, maybe you can have them write about the Commandos who made it and Peggy Carter’s post-war career instead.”

Ireland brightened. “Good idea!”

Maybe it was time to grow the mustache back. Or get a fake one.

 

* * *

 

If there was a bright side to this whole situation, it was that Steve was away on a mission and would be for the next week or so, so Bucky didn't have to deal with the “I told you so”s and the panicking about their cover. The downside was everything else. Bucky knew, logically, that no one would jump to the conclusion that math teacher Jack Murphy was Bucky Barnes back from the dead. But his cover absolutely did not need an entire high school’s worth of people thinking, “huh, Mr. Murphy really looks like Bucky Barnes,” because someday, that might prove to be a dangerous connection for them to have made. And if one kid posted to whatever social media website was the latest thing…there were people who might pay attention to that kind of thing, people who might know that Bucky Barnes being back from the dead wasn’t as far-fetched as it seemed.

A year or so ago, Bucky would have just left. But he was trying to build a life here, dammit. He was trying not to be afraid.  

That night, when he was brushing his teeth in the bathroom, he stared at his reflection and contemplated growing the mustache again. That would just invite endless comments from his students and the other teachers though. They’d all thought his “it was a dare that I committed to with worrying intensity” explanation was hilarious, and if he tried it again, he’d just get a lot of questions he didn’t have any good answers for. There were plenty of other ways to disguise his face, but they’d be suspicious as hell to people who already knew him.

He spat out toothpaste foam, made a face at himself in the mirror. He considered his options. A haircut wouldn’t help make his face look any less like…his face. Maybe if he let it grow long again, but he didn’t exactly have the time for that. He poked at the stupid cleft in his chin. What an inconveniently distinguishing facial feature. He tilted his head, eyed his well-past-five-o’clock shadow. Hmm. Growing a beard was probably his least suspicious, easiest option. It wasn’t quite as distracting as an ostentatious mustache, but it would have to do.

Lucky for him, his beard grew in fast, so he only spent about three days looking stubbly and disreputable, most of them over the weekend, and ha, suck it Steve, his beard did _not_ come in patchy. It didn’t look half-bad either, not when it was a proper beard rather than “I haven’t bothered to shave in a couple days” stubble. Most importantly, it made him look a lot older, and a lot less like Sergeant Bucky Barnes of the Howling Commandos. So mission accomplished, disaster averted.

 

* * *

 

Correction: disaster mostly averted. His students would not shut the hell up about his facial hair choices.

While he was passing graded homework back: “Is this a dare again, Mr. Murphy?”

“No.”

While the kids were supposed to be taking notes: “Why are you growing a beard?”

“Not really your business, kids.”

Walking in the hallway: “Lookin’ pretty hipstery, Mr. M!” said one of his pre-calc students, complete with finger guns.

“…Thanks?” He didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing.

While his AP Calc class were pulling out their notebooks and papers from their backpacks: “It’s not no-shave November though, Mr. Murphy.”

“What the heck is…never mind, I don’t care.”

And while he was demonstrating a solution on the whiteboard: “Is this a sadness beard?”

He stopped writing on the whiteboard. “A what?” He turned around to look at Lia. She was tapping her pencil against her lips and frowning.

“A sadness beard. My mom says men grow beards when they, like, give up on life, or are having too many feelings or whatever.” Ha. He’d have to call Steve’s beard a sadness beard sometime.

One of the other students gasped. “Mr. Murphy! You didn’t break up with your boyfriend, did you?”

“What? No! He’s just out of town! Not that my personal life is any of your business.” Fucking social media. A couple students spot him out and about with Steve over the summer and suddenly every damn kid in the school knew about Mr. Murphy’s “hot boyfriend.”

This earned him a classroom’s worth of wide, wounded eyes. “Mr. Murphy, we just want you to be _happy_.”

Oh christ. Now he felt guilty. Bucky had thought he’d kept his shit together well enough in the classroom, but apparently, his more attentive students had noticed that he seemed “sad” last year, and it had been a topic of some gossip. The kids had noticed too, when he was happier after Steve found him, and a few of them had said so at the end of last school year, in their own awkwardly earnest way. Of course, some of them also went with, _you seem happier than usual. Does that mean we did great on our final?_ It was sweet of them, really, but also not at all their business.

He sighed, smiled at them. “I am happy, I promise. It’s not a sadness beard. I’ll be even happier if we get through this equation and you all show me you understand it.”

 

* * *

 

His fellow teachers were only a little less nosy than his students, but with them at least he could grin and say, “You know, I got carded at the grocery store the other day when I was picking up some beer? Never happens when I’ve got a beard.” And then the conversation would inevitably shift towards how he ought to appreciate his youth while he had it.

Ms. Johnson (freshman and sophomore English, possibly as old as Bucky really was) squinted at him from behind her glasses. “Hmm, you remind me of someone with that beard.”

Bucky was about to despair: surely he didn’t look anything like Sergeant Bucky Barnes of the 107th right now. He had a beard dammit. He was wearing aggressively uncool glasses. If he still looked like the Bucky Barnes of the 40s, maybe it was time for some sort of disfiguring accident. The Winter Soldier part of him grumbled dire things about eliminating witnesses. But then Ms. Johnson snapped her fingers.

“Paul Newman, God rest his soul! When he had a beard!” Bucky relaxed. He had no idea who Paul Newman was, but he didn’t care. So long as no one thought he looked like the definitely dead Bucky Barnes.

He googled _paul newman beard_ later, and wow, that was an unwarrantedly flattering comparison. Bucky didn’t think they looked much alike, but—oh. Paul Newman was an actor, and he had apparently played the role of Bucky Barnes in a Captain America movie in the 50s. Bucky sighed. Whatever. At least it was still one degree of separation from his real identity.

 

* * *

 

Steve was mostly on radio silence during his mission, which Bucky tried not to be too anxious about. If it was a shorter mission, he’d be on ops for it. But it was recon for and then a raid on a HYDRA facility that had merged with AIM, and that was definitely going to stretch through and well past school hours, and was interagency besides. Bucky couldn’t help without blowing his cover.

Steve had assured him the mission wouldn’t be too dangerous, which was generally bullshit coming from Steve. But he had a ton of backup, including Sam and Natasha, so Bucky was pretty sure Steve wasn’t going to get up to anything too crazy. And he did get the occasional text from Steve, quick status updates and awkward declarations of how much he missed Bucky. That sparked a memory of the letters Steve had sent him during the war: terse and wry, full of admonishments not to worry about him, with admissions about how much he missed Bucky buried in mundane anecdotes.

The texts only made him miss Steve more. Bucky thought the time they’d spent apart would act as some sort of inoculation against the pain of new separations, like they could both build up some sort of immunity. But Bucky’s memories of missing Steve when he was at Basic, when he was at the front, were still sharp and keen, and they didn’t ease the ache of being apart now. He had missed Steve desperately back then, and done his best not to show it. Other guys hadn’t seemed to miss their best friends the way Bucky did, they just seemed to forge new friendships and chattered cheerfully about what unit their friends had ended up with, recounted the stories they got from them with excitement. Maybe it had helped them, to know they were all going through the same thing together.

Bucky hadn’t had that comfort. As happy as he’d been that Steve was spared the war, he’d still felt a faint panic at the way the war and their diverging experiences were pulling them inexorably away from each other, like Bucky was caught in a rip current and Steve was waving at him from the shore, unaware that Bucky was about to be pulled under, or borne far away on currents Steve couldn’t see or follow. That it had turned out that Steve could follow, at least part of the way, had only helped a little, in the end. They’d still ended up dying separately, each of them alone.

Even after enduring what both of them had thought was a far more permanent separation, spending days apart made Bucky restless with an ache he used to be able to bear, if never entirely ignore. He had lived with it when he hadn’t known what the ache was anchored to, and then he had lived with it when he had, because there had been no other option. He could still bear it. Especially when Steve was going to be back in a few days, for fuck’s sake. _Stop being so pathetic_ , he told himself sternly. Maybe the kids were onto something when it came to the sadness beard though. He did have a distinctly hangdog look when he met his own eyes in the bathroom mirror every lonely night.

Finally, after nine long days, he got the text he’d been waiting for from Steve: _mission over! Everyone okay. Headed home, ETA 20 hrs. FaceTime you when you get out of class tomorrow?_ Followed by a string of enthusiastic emojis that made Bucky laugh. He sent back some excited emojis of his own, and _can’t wait. I miss you._

 

* * *

 

Bucky had barely walked through the front door when Steve called the next day, and he nearly dropped the phone in his rush to answer it.

“Hey Buck! You home yet? I’ve just gotta debrief with Hill in a few minutes, then I’m headed back.”

Just hearing Steve’s voice released tension he hadn’t even noticed had taken up residence in his shoulders. “Hey, I just walked through the door. Call me back in a minute, I’ll take it on the laptop,” he said, and a minute later, he was staring at Steve’s stupid, handsome face on his laptop screen. The lack of lunar colonies or flying cars were still deep disappointments to him, but even so, sometimes, the future was pretty great.

“Hi,” he said, and gave Steve what was probably a pretty sappy smile. Steve looked way more gobsmacked by that than he should have.

“Hey,” he said faintly. “Uh, you grew a beard?”

“Oh! Yeah, jeez, forgot about that. Yeah, the history classes are about to start a World War II unit in a week or so, and the Commandos are gonna feature pretty prominently in the lesson plan, apparently. Thought I’d play it safe.” He rubbed at the beard self-consciously. “Does it look awful? I mean, I know it’s not worse than the mustache, but—”

“It looks great,” Steve blurted out. “It looks—really, really good, Buck,” he said with hushed fervency. Steve’s eyes were wide and Bucky could just glimpse a blush building high on his cheeks.

Bucky grinned in relief. Steve’s Adam's apple bobbed with the force of his swallow, and his pupils dilated. Huh. That was interesting. Bucky tilted his head and studied Steve’s face, which was still flushed.

“God, I missed you,” said Steve in a low and fervent voice. The sound of it dragged a tingling line down Bucky’s spine, made him lean towards the laptop as if Steve were really there in front of him and they could kiss. It seemed unfair that they could manage to spark this much damn sexual tension when they were still hundreds of miles apart. Pros and cons of the future, Bucky supposed. 

They only had time to exchange quick updates on their respective weeks before Steve had to go debrief, but that was enough to tide Bucky over until Steve got back in time for them to have a late dinner. Or maybe they could skip dinner, thought Bucky, thinking of how avid and intent Steve’s eyes had been on him. There were other things he’d rather be doing with Steve after over a week of not seeing him.

 

* * *

 

As much as he maybe wanted to, Bucky didn’t wait at the door for Steve, but he did head for the front hallway pretty quickly once he heard the door open and Steve’s pack hit the floor.

“Buck?” called out Steve, and Bucky got a quick look at Steve’s tired but bright face before they smashed into each other in a hug.

It was ridiculous, probably, but it always went like this now when they spent longer than a few days apart. Sam made fun of them for it: _jesus christ, it’s like The Notebook every damn time. Should I play some romantic swelling music for y’all?_ Sam had actually done it once too, but then he’d immediately regretted it when Steve and Bucky had taken it as a cue to engage in the most showy, over-dramatic reunion kiss imaginable.

They joked about it with Sam, with each other, but Bucky knew the truth by now: grief wasn’t easily forgotten. Even when the subject of it was erased, the grief stayed. Even when the reason for it was restored, the grief lingered. It wasn’t a thing that could be undone, or unwound from the ties that bound him and Steve together. And so every separation wasn’t only a presentiment of the final one, but a memory of it, and every reunion was an attempt to ease that memory’s pain.   

Of course, it was just sexual frustration too. It still shocked Bucky a little, how viscerally Steve wanted him, how much Bucky wanted him back. How quickly that wanting kindled into action, how easy it was to let himself touch and be touched, after so long without. It wasn’t muscle memory: they hadn’t done this, before. But maybe it was years of wanting, too long denied. Or maybe it was just them. Right now, as with every reunion, Steve kissed him with devouring intensity, and the last of the week’s worth of tension slipped from Bucky’s back and shoulders all at once.

When they pulled apart, Bucky gave Steve a quick once-over for visible injuries and didn’t see anything other than the very faint remnants of a mostly healed bruise on Steve’s cheekbone. Some flickering shadow of memory prompted him to press a feather light kiss to it, and Steve’s eyes fluttered closed for a moment as he let out a long breath.

Bucky was tempted to try and chase the memory down, but then Steve took Bucky’s face in his hands, smoothing his thumbs along the soft hair on Bucky’s cheeks. Bucky expected him to say something teasing about Bucky’s new look, or make some awkward double entendre about dinner, or even some devastatingly sincere romantic thing.

Instead, Steve said, “I swear to god I’ve been hard since we FaceTimed,” in a voice low enough to be a growl.

Bucky immediately turned red like a goddamn virgin. Not because of the sentiment so much, but holy shit, for Steve Rogers, that was downright filthy dirty talk. Some part of Bucky was actually _scandalized_ , like when did Steve learn that shit, as if Bucky himself hadn’t said considerably filthier things. Of course, he was also deeply into it. Bucky gave an experimental roll of his hips, pressed their bodies closer together. Steve groaned and practically attacked him with another kiss, open-mouthed and dirty. _Hello._ Yeah, Steve was hard. Bucky couldn’t even manage a lame joke about it, he was too turned on.

“Just the sight of my pretty face does that to you?” he managed to tease before his mouth was too busy doing other things.

“Yeah, and some other things,” said Steve.

Bucky kind of lost track of things as they kissed and grinded against each other like horny sixteen year olds, at least until his back bumped up against the hallway wall and Steve wrestled Bucky’s shirt and pants off.

“Um—” Bucky started, because he wasn’t sure what Steve intended to do in the front hallway, but whatever it was, surely they could do it better in their bedroom. He was pretty immediately derailed from this train of thought by the way Steve mouthed at his cock through his briefs, his breath hot and wet against the sensitive skin, even through the fabric. Bucky threw his head back against the wall and moaned, and tried to still the involuntary jerking of his hips. Steve just pinned Bucky’s hips against the wall with his hands for a moment, a silent command to _stay_ , before he, god, finally pulled Bucky’s briefs off too.

“We fucking right here?” asked Bucky. “Because the bedroom’s not that far.”

“I want you right here,” said Steve, a little wild with it. “God, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, about you—”

When Steve stood up again, he pulled off his own pants and briefs on the way, and Bucky scrabbled at Steve’s shirt. “Off, off, c’mon,” he panted, and Steve threw it to the side.

“Shit, lube,” cursed Steve. “Stay there!”

“Yeah, see, that’s why I said the bedroom—” started Bucky, but he stayed leaning against the wall, which felt weird against his naked back, but sure helped his shaky legs. He thought he saw where this was going now, and he was already feeling pretty desperate for it.

“No, hang on,” said Steve and dived for his pack, still on the ground by the door, where he rummaged around, tossing, jesus, a bunch of ammo and knives out before emerging triumphantly with a little bottle of lube. “Ha!”

With somewhat disconcerting speed, Steve was back to crowding him up against the wall, and then lifting him up so he had to wrap his legs around Steve’s waist, his cock trapped against Steve’s stomach, which was, fuck, not enough pressure, not enough anything.

“Steve, c’mon, please,” he said. They were both breathing hard now, but Steve shushed him.

Steve kept Bucky braced with one arm, and Bucky grabbed onto Steve’s shoulders, just in time for Steve to stick two fingers in his ass.

Once his everything stopped lighting up from the touch, Bucky said, “Oh, we’re doing _this_ right here, in the hallway, okay, hurry up with it then, fuck me already—” he said, pushing demandingly against Steve’s fingers.

“Shut up, oh my god,” said Steve, and shifted Bucky around a little. Bucky tightened his legs around Steve’s waist in both warning and encouragement and Steve groaned. “Just, gimme a sec, let me—” And then he was sliding in with a strangled groan, the angle a little strange, but fuck, so good.

Bucky’s last coherent thought was a wordless sort of thanks for the serum and the effortless way Steve was holding him up, and then he was gone, coming apart with every borderline brutal thrust of Steve’s hips. He was distantly aware of the wall giving way a little with a splintering crunch, but he didn’t care, he just didn’t want Steve to stop. Steve came inside him with violent shudder, his grip on Bucky turning bruising, and that sent Bucky over the edge too.

They collapsed gracelessly down to the floor in a sweaty and sticky heap. Bucky felt a little like he’d just been hit by a truck. A sexy truck.

“Holy shit,” he said.

Steve looked a little embarrassed now. “I, um, really missed you?”

Bucky let out a surprised laugh. “Missed you too, sweetheart,” he said, still a little breathless. Steve kissed the closest part of Bucky he could reach, which happened to be Bucky’s shoulder.

“You up for trying that the other way around?” asked Steve.

Bucky shoved weakly at Steve. “What, right _now_? Jesus, Steve, what is this, the sex olympics?” Steve burst into laughter. “Shut up! By the way, you’re fixing the drywall, asshole,” he said, before Steve’s laughter overtook him too.

 

* * *

 

Steve was staring at him again. All Bucky was currently doing was typing up new problem sets for his students, so he didn’t get what had Steve so enraptured. It wasn’t like _man hunched over a laptop fighting with word processor to format these damned equations right_ was such an artistically fascinating tableau or anything.

“You need something, Steve?” he asked, and looked over at Steve, who continued to stare sort of dreamily at Bucky. Bucky narrowed his eyes. Steve didn’t even have his sketchbook out.

“Hmm? No, no, sorry, you do your work.” Bucky grunted and did just that. But Steve’s attention didn’t waver.

“Seriously, what is it? You know you can draw me whenever, right?”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry, it’s just—you look really handsome.” Steve was blushing. Bucky raised an eyebrow. “I mean, you always look handsome, obviously, but right now you just, with the hair, and uh, you’re concentrating so hard, it’s just—I’m going to shut up now.”

Bucky fought hard not to smile, but this was charming as hell. Steve didn’t usually get so tongue-tied around him. He closed the laptop and turned his chair around to face Steve, spreading his legs wide in an invitation that Steve scrambled to take up. The chair creaked a little under their collective weight when Steve straddled his lap, but it held up. Bucky settled his hands on Steve’s slim waist, and for just a second, he regretted that they’d never done this when Steve was smaller.

“Hmm, I don’t think it’s the hair or my look of concentration here, Steve.” Steve nuzzled at Bucky’s neck, his cheek. His breath was hot on Bucky’s skin as he pressed light kisses up along the column of Bucky’s neck, to just behind his ear. Bucky wasn’t distracted, though it was a good effort. “C’mon, what is it.” Bucky slid his hands up under Steve’s shirt, and Steve sighed happily.

“The beard looks real good, Buck,” Steve admitted against Bucky’s hair. “I mean, I just look like a lumberjack, but you look—distinguished and smart—like, I dunno, an old-timey poet or something—”

“Oh my god, is this a sexy teacher fetish? Steven Grant Rogers, do you have a hot for teacher thing?”

“What? No! I can’t just think my best guy looks real good with a beard?” The chair creaked ominously. They both went still as if that would make them weigh any less.

“Time to relocate,” muttered Bucky, then shifted his grip on Steve to scoop him up, and got up from the chair. Steve yelped but wrapped his legs around Bucky’s waist pretty quickly. Hell yeah, super soldier strength and a robot arm were so fucking useful sometimes. Bucky grinned at the still surprised look on Steve’s face.

Steve responded with wide eyes. “Wall. We need to try the wall thing, c’mon—”

“Stop squirming, fuck, I’m gonna drop you—” Steve swallowed Bucky’s complaints with a viciously dirty kiss. Bucky broke away gasping. “Yeah, okay, got any wall in particular in mind?”

Steve grinned his about-to-start-shit grin. “Bedroom wall, the lube’s in there.” Bucky started walking them over to the bedroom.

“So, help me out here, I’m not seeing the connection between the beard and fucking against a wall…”

Steve groaned. “There’s no connection, Buck—”

“I’m just saying, I grow a beard, you fuck me against a wall right after, and now this, it just makes a man wonder is all—”

“They’re unrelated!” protested Steve all the way to their bedroom.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretty sure I got the idea of Paul Newman playing Bucky Barnes in a movie from another fic, but hell if I can remember which one.


	6. they say in this place you can reinvent yourself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha got the text from Steve when she was mid-interrogation of a HYDRA agent: _mission complete, two confirmed HYDRA casualties. Will need some containment/clean up eventually, but it’ll keep._ She took a break from slowly but surely breaking this guy’s will to shoot Steve a quick text back: _debrief tomorrow?_ and got Steve’s confirmation.
> 
> In no way did Steve’s bland texts prepare her for the debrief that was to come.
> 
> Natasha's POV, not long after the end of _they're gonna send us to prison for jerks_.

Natasha got the text from Steve when she was mid-interrogation of a HYDRA agent: _mission complete, two confirmed HYDRA casualties. Will need some containment/clean up eventually, but it’ll keep._ She took a break from slowly but surely breaking this guy’s will to shoot Steve a quick text back: _debrief tomorrow?_ and got Steve’s confirmation.

In no way did Steve’s bland texts prepare her for the debrief that was to come.

* * *

Her first hint that something was up was when she saw Steve’s face on her laptop screen. For a split second, she thought that Steve looked years younger, but then she realized no, he just looked happy. So happy he was practically glowing with it. The sight made the usually prickly and armored parts of her heart soften, and she found herself smiling at Steve almost automatically before her brain kicked in. She was pretty sure only one thing would ever make Steve look so unreservedly happy.

“You found Barnes,” she said, and Steve proceeded to practically blind her with what had to be the biggest, most genuine smile she’d ever seen on his face.

“Yeah. Yeah, I did. Buck, c’mere.”

Natasha braced herself for the Winter Soldier’s grim glower, or the dead-eyed glare that probably figured in a lot of people’s nightmares. Instead, she got Bucky Barnes’ wide and anxious blue-gray eyes, and an awkward little wave.

“Um, hi.”

“...Soldat?”

Barnes flinched. “I prefer Bucky, please. Or, uh, Jack, that’s my cover right now.”

Now Sam popped his head into the frame, eyebrows raised. “We’ve got kind of a wild story for you, Nat.”

Natasha stared at them all for a few seconds: Steve’s incandescent joy, its quiet counterpart alight in Barnes, though Barnes was also biting his lip in apprehension, and Sam’s deadpan “yeah, this is happening,” face. This debrief would probably go better in person. She calculated travel times and how long it would take to wrap her op up.

“I’ll be there in a couple days.”

* * *

On the way to Cleveland, Natasha texted Sam: _should I be worried?_ Sam would know what she meant. Steve was unavoidably compromised when it came to the Winter Soldier, but she and Sam had to be clear-eyed and realistic. They’d quietly planned for the worst case scenarios (the Winter Soldier dead, or recaptured by HYDRA to be used again, or still coming after Steve to complete his final mission), and the just plain grim ones (the Winter Soldier too far gone to ever be anything like Bucky Barnes again, or caught and imprisoned by the authorities). They hadn’t planned for whatever this was.

 _Don’t think so_ , replied Sam. _We’ll give you the full story when you get here, but Barnes has been lying low as a damned high school math teacher for the past year._

Natasha spent way too long trying to figure out if “high school math teacher” was the result of some autocorrect texting mistake. Before she could ask for more clarification, Sam texted again: _he’s the one who’s been taking HYDRA’s money and shit._

Natasha wouldn’t have thought that was the Winter Soldier’s style, but maybe it was Barnes’. _And Karpov?_

_That was Barnes too, though he says he’s been doing some whole ‘almost murder-free revenge plan.’ He’s got intel we could really use._

Huh. Her natural suspicion warred with the relief that wanted to take hold of her. For Steve’s sake, she hoped she had reason to be relieved. The best Natasha had been able to bring herself to hope for when it came to the Winter Soldier had been that he’d take a route similar to hers, after she’d wrecked and razed what she could of the Red Room’s remnants: lie low and gather intel as he got his shit together, and eventually either come in from the cold himself, or be brought in safely. This could be just that, she supposed. But if Natasha had learned anything from Nick Fury, it was that someone had to be ready for the worst case scenarios. Though, admittedly, Nick hadn’t seemed to be entirely prepared for the secret Nazis everywhere scenario. Real hard to shake the possibility of that one once it had already happened to you once. Brainwashed or not, Natasha was going to make sure they weren’t in for round two of that worst case scenario with Barnes, or some other disaster that would end in explosions and Steve looking sad again. 

* * *

She got to Cleveland in the early afternoon, and was greeted with a hug by a beaming Steve.

“Oof. Hi, Steve.”

He pulled back with an abashed smile. “Sorry.”

“Well, where’s the reason for all this blinding happiness?” she asked, and peered around the living room Steve led her into. She half-expected to see the Winter Soldier looming in the corner.

“School’s not out yet, he’s still teaching class. He’ll be back in a few hours.”

So, maybe Sam’s text hadn’t been a bizarre autocorrect error. “Because he’s a high school math teacher.”

“Yup.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” confirmed Steve.

No, Natasha couldn’t picture it. And who the hell would choose high school teacher as their cover if the mission didn’t call for it? Way better to pick something anonymous with irregular hours and high turnover so no one cared if you disappeared to avoid getting arrested. Maybe Steve and Sam had misunderstood.

“You mean it’s his cover,” she tried. “He’s not an actual teacher, he’s—”

“Neighbor Jack!” said Sam as he came in. “Hey Nat, welcome to Cleveland.”

“What.”

“Bucky, aka Jack Murphy, is our neighbor. He lives next door. Our own personal Ned Flanders,” said Sam as he flopped down onto the couch.

“Again, what.”

Now both Sam and Steve looked faintly embarrassed. “It’s kind of a long story…” started Steve.

Natasha settled herself on the living room’s armchair to listen. About one minute in, she longed for a drink.

“A mustache. A mustache was enough to fool both of you.”

Sam shifted in his seat and scowled. “And glasses!”

“And, you know, a digital mesh over his metal arm!” protested Steve. Natasha just stared at him. ”Listen, we’re soldiers, not spies.” Sam crossed his arms and nodded. Natasha kept staring in silence. “And I did recognize him, okay, but Sam didn’t, and Buck didn’t say anything, so I didn’t want to seem like a crazy person, you know, after the other times—” and now Steve was making the big, wounded eyes at her, the ones that made him look like an unloved puppy at the shelter.

What a fucking farce. She honestly didn’t know whether to be impressed by Barnes’ disguise skills and commitment to maintaining a cover, or deeply disappointed in Steve and Sam. Right now, she was leaning towards the latter. Because seriously: a _mustache_.

She sighed. “Fine, continue.” And okay, wow, Sam hadn’t been kidding when he called it a wild story.

“…And then the zombies started swarming us, but Bucky had rigged the place to blow, and it’s all blocked up now. Someone should probably make sure it stays that way though, or maybe destroy the whole mine…”

“Zombies.” She looked at Sam, who nodded in confirmation. Not that it mattered, really, but Natasha had to ask, “Fast zombies or slow zombies?”

“Kinda in between,” said Sam. “It was hard to tell, they were basically falling apart. There were just a lot of them.”

Natasha rubbed at her forehead and eyes. “Right. Zombies in a HYDRA base that’s in an abandoned mine. This is our lives now.”

“Is it really any weirder than aliens?” asked Steve.

“Fair point,” conceded Natasha with a grimace.

She was already trying to come up with a way to get the zombie mine problem handled without uttering the words _undead Nazis_ and _Confederate soldiers_ to any official government agencies. Which agency would even handle that? Was the EPA going to have to get involved? Maybe the CDC. And there was still Barnes to deal with too. Natasha wasn’t ruling out the possibility that this whole situation was darker than the farce with a happy ending it seemed to be.

“So. Sam said Barnes has intel,” she prompted as she tapped out a quick text to Maria: _what government agency would hypothetically deal with the cleanup of an abandoned mine full of zombies_? _Asking for a friend._

Steve sobered some, taking on his more serious, Captain America air. For a scant half second, Natasha missed Steve, whose open happiness was already being tucked behind the professional wall of Captain Rogers.

“Yeah, he’s got a whole set up in his garage,” he said, and took her next door.

They spent the next couple hours going over some of Barnes’ very thorough intel analysis, which eased Natasha’s suspicions some. It all slotted in neatly with what they’d gleaned of Barnes’ movements since Insight, and it accounted for all the mysteriously missing HYDRA resources, and the higher ups and money men who were showing up dead or getting caught.

And, more important still, Barnes’ one-man HYDRA investigative task force was meticulous, ordered, careful. This wasn’t a man on a rampage, or a malfunctioning weapon with the safety turned off. This, maybe, was whatever was left of Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier both, taking revenge against HYDRA on his own terms. Natasha could relate. Though her own Red Room revenge had ended up being somewhat more explosive. Barnes just had a lot of spreadsheets and hacked records and intercepted HYDRA communications. What a nerd.

However he was taking his revenge, if Barnes was moving against HYDRA on his own, that took some of the worst case scenarios off the table, but not all of them. Natasha still needed to talk to Barnes, get his measure, preferably without Steve around. They were still going through the frankly impressive amount of intel Barnes had collected on Strucker when Barnes got home.

“Steve, you here?”

“In the garage with Sam and Natasha!”

Barnes came in warily, keeping a careful eye on Natasha. She kept her expression pleasantly neutral, and didn’t train a weapon on him, or make any other threatening moves, a courtesy Barnes thankfully returned. So two seconds in, and already this was going a ton better than their last meeting. Not that Natasha hadn’t had fun riding the Winter Soldier like he was a particularly cranky bull as she’d tried to garrote him, but she’d prefer not fighting for her life and/or attempting to kill him for once.

Whatever Barnes saw in her careful non-reaction to him seemed to make him relax a little, because he turned his attention to Steve with a bright and sweet smile. Between the thick and dorky glasses he was wearing, and the bland clothes, Barnes looked utterly harmless, and she suddenly got why Sam hadn’t recognized him. Add a distracting mustache, and the apparently flesh arm, and even Natasha would have had a long moment of doubt.

“Still getting shit about shaving that mustache off?” asked Steve with a grin as Barnes came over to where they were sitting.

Barnes groaned as he pulled off the glasses. “I swear to god, it’s all the school’s talking about.” He bent down to give Steve a quick kiss on the mouth, then turned to Natasha, with, god, weapons-grade sincere wide blue eyes. She scarcely had time to react to the kissing thing before Barnes said, “Hi. Um, we’ve met before, I guess, but, uh. Not under the best circumstances. I’m sorry.”

Natasha looked at Steve and Barnes, and the utter lack of personal space between them. A number of things abruptly made sense about Steve, though holy shit, he’d kept this tightly under wraps. Maybe he wasn’t so bad at keeping up a cover as she’d thought. Steve blushed when she raised an eyebrow, but his jaw took on that stubborn tilt, and he shifted closer to Barnes. As sweet a sight as it was, Natasha added a couple worst case scenarios to her running list of them.

“Don’t worry, I’m not holding it against you,” she said after they’d squirmed sufficiently, and tilted her head to study Barnes. She could see him swallow hard under the scrutiny, but he held her stare. “Thanks for all the help taking out HYDRA,” she continued, indicating the intel surrounding them. “Steve. You didn’t think to ever mention this?”

“Mention what?” She glared. “Oh, uh, me and Buck?”

“It has been like three days, and they’re already at the old marrieds stage,” said Sam, long suffering.

“Excuse you, I’m still feeling pretty honeymoon-like,” retorted Barnes, and Steve beamed up at him, tugged him down to sit on his lap. Barnes rolled his eyes, but a pretty flush took up residence on his cheeks, and he threaded his fingers together with Steve’s where Steve’s arm was wrapped around him. That was just too damned sweet. She narrowed her eyes. If this was a joke, or some sort of con on Barnes’ part...

“ _Steve_ ,” she prompted.

“What was there to say, Nat. We weren’t together before. And my personal feelings weren’t really relevant to the mission.” Now Steve smiled his wry, sad smile. “You knew I was compromised anyway.”

“This conversation isn’t over,” warned Natasha. “You ready for a debrief, Barnes?”

Barnes nodded and rose from Steve’s lap, and quick as that, the nearly palpable warmth and affectionate glow surrounding Steve and Barnes receded, leaving what Natasha recognized from old newsreels as Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes’ focused professionalism.

“So, tell me what you’ve been up to.”

* * *

“Are you taking me into custody, Agent Romanoff?” asked Barnes after they got through the most urgent items on Natasha’s to-do list. Steve started on an automatic denial, hackles rising, and Natasha interrupted him before he could really get going.

“I’m not really an agent of anything right now, Barnes.”

“You know what I mean. One call from you, and every alphabet agency in the world comes down on my head.”

Barnes’ voice was even and calm, but his body was tense, poised for flight or violence. It was the first hint of the Winter Soldier’s danger she’d seen so far. Natasha was, paradoxically, relieved. She’d have been far more worried if Barnes had spent the whole time playing at harmless.

“That won’t happen,” said Steve. “Natasha—” Barnes gave Steve a sharp shake of the head, and Steve shut up, to Natasha’s surprise.

“I’ll have to let Fury know, and Hill,” she said. “But no, I don’t see any reason to turn you in, and a hell of a lot of reasons not to. This is staying Avengers’ business, as far as I’m concerned.”

If SHIELD hadn’t turned out to be HYDRA, she’d have taken Barnes to them, to Fury. That had turned out alright for her, after all. She’d thought so, anyway. Ha. _Just another Red Room, Natalia. You never got out and you’ll never_ —she shut that voice up. _No_. However rotten SHIELD had ended up being, the Avengers Initiative was still clean, and running wholly in the black when it came to the moral ledger. Any other agency, and the Winter Soldier would be disappeared, killed if he was lucky, and used if he wasn’t, and all it would take was one HYDRA double agent to have him fall back into HYDRA’s hands. He wouldn’t have a chance.

Natasha wanted him to at least have a chance. She’d had one, after all. And Natasha didn’t trust much, nowadays, but she trusted the small circle of the Avengers as much as she could trust anybody. The best option she’d been able to come up with for Barnes was to fold him into that small circle, one way or the other. Steve agreed, she knew.

“I told you, Buck, you’re safe with us. Fury and Hill need to know in case something goes wrong, but you can trust them with this.”

Barnes didn’t relax just yet, eyes still fixed on her with all the intent of a trapped predator considering whether to try for the kill, or bolt. Natasha tried not to tense up in turn, no matter how much she wanted to. Barnes frowned, tilted his head.

“Wait, you said you’re telling Fury? Didn’t, I, uh—”

“Kill him?” Both Steve and Barnes winced. “You almost did,” said Natasha. “But he got better, decided being officially dead would be more useful while going after HYDRA.”

“Oh,” said Barnes. “I should...apologize or something, probably.”

Sam snorted. “What’re you gonna do, send him a Hallmark card? They don’t make ‘sorry about the attempted assassination’ apology cards.”

“Yeah, no, they don’t, I’d’ve had to send a lot of those out too,” said Natasha.

Steve rolled his eyes. “You can’t send Fury a card, Buck,” said Steve, and the part-mulish, part-devilish look that flitted across Barnes’ face suggested otherwise, before Barnes’ expression settled back into tense and wary watchfulness.

“Alright, so you won’t turn me in. Will Fury, or Hill?”

“You’ve stayed under the radar this long, I guarantee you we’re not messing with that. And we can always use more help taking down HYDRA.” She remembered Sam’s text. “Murder-free, even.” Barnes only relaxed a little at that.

“We’ll work something out, like I said. You can stay here,” said Steve, gentle now.

“And you?” asked Barnes, turning to Steve. “Are you staying? I know I got no right to ask, after running from you for so damn long—”

“Hey, no, you have every right to ask. And I’ll keep running missions, yeah, but I’ll come home after. I’m always gonna come home after.” Steve pulled Barnes into a loose hug, and they did some meaningful staring into each other’s eyes.

Sam gave her a look that was equal parts annoyed and amused. “So, we’re based in Cleveland now, basically.”

“‘We’? I was not consulted on that,” said Natasha.

“We mean that Bucky’ll be doing what he can from here, no missions. He’s staying here. So I’m staying here too,” said Steve.

“Unless you have a short mission that’s not on a school night. And maybe anything during summer break, I can go with you and run ops, be overwatch if you really need it.”

“Yeah? You sure? You don’t have to.” asked Steve with an excited smile.

Barnes smiled back. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

God, she left these idiots alone for a few months and suddenly everyone was moving to Cleveland and doing...whatever the fuck Barnes was doing. Which surely couldn’t be teaching high school kids. Surely. “What. What do school nights have to do with anything?”

Barnes managed to tear himself away from Steve to frown at her. “I have work. I’m a teacher, at the high school.”

“Right. Steve said that, but you mean just as a cover, right?” Just because his cover was high school teacher, didn’t mean he was _actually_ teaching high school kids, right? Like, part of Natasha’s Natalie Rushman cover had been modeling in Japan, but she hadn’t actually _done_ it. She’d just photoshopped up some fake photoshoots.

Sam shook his head. “He’s a literal, actual high school math teacher who coaches the damn mathletes. The _mathletes,_ Natasha.”

Barnes gave Sam an icy, distinctly Winter Soldier-esque glare before turning his attention to Natasha again. “I don’t know what you mean. I actually teach actual high school students actual math. I like my job. I’m not giving it up to run around the world murdering HYDRA assholes. I can fuck up their shit just fine from here.”

“Right. Of course,” said Natasha a little faintly. Briefly, she entertained the mental image of the Winter Soldier in full tac gear standing at a chalkboard in front of a class full of teenagers, and then swallowed her hysterical little giggle at the image.

“Are we done for the night? I’ve got some lesson plans to go over.”

“Sure.”

No scenario Natasha had considered, worst case or best case or even _???_ case, had included the Winter Soldier deciding to live a quiet life teaching at a high school. But alright, whatever. Natasha could adapt, she was adaptable. And her mission here wasn’t done yet.

* * *

Natasha was a spy, and a damned good one, so of course she wasn’t just going to take anyone’s word for Barnes being a math teacher. _Trust, but verify_ , she told herself, as she casually strolled out of Steve and Sam’s safe house with the intent of following Barnes to work. Outside, Steve was on the patch of grass that passed for Barnes’ lawn, stretching for his morning run.

“There’s a tree right outside Buck—Jack’s classroom window. Gives a decent view into his classroom, not too hard to climb.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Natasha. “I’m just going to get coffee.”

“Uh huh. Wave hi to Jack for me.”

There was, in fact, a conveniently located tree outside of Barnes’ alleged classroom window, and Natasha didn’t even have to worry about the branches holding her weight if they’d held up for Steve. She climbed up quickly, and perched on a branch that bore her weight and got her close enough to hear Barnes’ voice drifting through the open classroom window. The window was too grimy and dirty to offer a very clear view inside the classroom, but she could make out Barnes’ dark hair, and those awful glasses of his, and she could hear his voice clearly enough. He’d changed his accent for his cover, to something vaguely southern.

She settled in to surveil, idly considering whether or not to plant any bugs. But she’d spent last night going over Barnes’ cover with a fine-toothed comb, and it had held up. The school’s security feeds showed Barnes walking in and out regularly on almost every school day. Jack Murphy’s school email account and class rosters had been easy enough to hack into too, and they confirmed Barnes’ cover: Jack Murphy started teaching at the high school this school year, and he was, in fact, coaching the mathletes. Natasha had even gone so far as to check his students’ social media accounts, which made her feel like a creepy old woman, but the students confirmed it too: Mr. Murphy was the new teacher in the math department, and his students mostly loved him. They were also pretty worked up about the disappearance of the infamous mustache, posting things like, _so my calc teacher is a secret hottie, it’s honestly ruining my life_ and _Mr. M had that awful pornstache as a DARE?! I’m shook_ and, her favorite, _GROW THE STACHE BACK, MR. M. YOUR FACE IS TOO DISTRACTING CALCULUS IS HARD ENOUGH ;____;_

Barnes’ voice started sounding closer. Shit, he was walking to the window.

“Now I know how much some of you hate graphing, but please, if you can’t use graph paper or a ruler, at least _try_ to draw straight lines. I’m going to start taking points off for graphs that look like they were drawn by an arthritic drunk.” A small chorus of whines started up. “No whining! Use the edge of a book to draw some straight lines if you have to!”

Barnes reached the window and gave her a deadpan glare from behind the grimy window as he closed it. She smiled and wiggled her fingers in a little wave. So. The Winter Soldier really was a high school math teacher now. Alright, she could work with that. She could adapt to that new reality.

* * *

After spending a couple class periods observing Barnes, she headed back to Steve and Sam’s safe house, coffee in hand.

“Is watching Barnes teach calculus just that thrilling? Should I go view this amazing sight too?” asked Sam.

“Sure, if you’re up for living up to your codename and nesting in a tree.” Sam booed her, and she grinned.

“Satisfied?” asked Steve, eyebrows raised.

“He’s definitely a teacher,” allowed Natasha.

A couple worst case scenarios had been definitively struck off her list after watching Barnes with his students. There were still plenty left, though. _What if Barnes was playing them, what if Barnes was knowingly or unknowingly the bait in a trap, a ticking time bomb, what if_ …

And there was the small but keen sting of Steve having never told her about how he felt about Barnes. She’d wondered, of course she had. Steve’s devotion, and the vague but intense ways he tended to describe what Barnes meant to him, had suggested that maybe there was something more there than friendship. But in years of Natasha trying to gently and sometimes not-so-gently goad Steve into dating, he’d never said a word about being bi, or about carrying a torch for Barnes. And Natasha hadn’t figured it out either. So, that was 0 for 2 on being a good friend and a good spy. Great job, Romanoff.

“So, what’s next?” asked Sam. “We know Barnes is staying here, and we’ve got all this intel on Strucker. We moving on that?”

Natasha shook off her self-pity. “That’ll be a big op, and we won’t be able to do it under the radar. We’ll need to make nice with a bunch of agencies to get it cleared and set up.”

Steve nodded. “Let’s get the possibly cursed gold and all this intel to Stark, then get to work on this Strucker op. Anything else that’s more urgent?”

“I still don’t think the zombie mine gold is cursed,” said Sam. Steve and Natasha just stared at him.

“Hey Sam, replay that sentence in your head, and reconsider your position,” said Steve. Sam flipped him off as Steve laughed and Natasha grinned.

“You planning on, what, FedExing that stuff to Tony?” asked Natasha.

There was a suspiciously long pause from Sam and Steve. “…No?” said Steve eventually. After a few seconds of staring, Steve said more firmly, “No. We’ll head to New York, drop it and Bucky’s intel off in person. Or, uh, you know, you could take it?” suggested Steve with his stupid, big hopeful eyes. Natasha hardened her heart against this admittedly adorable sight.

“Oh no, no way, Rogers. You get to explain all this to Tony and Maria in person.” Steve’s face fell. “Since when do you try to get out of doing work anyway?” Natasha asked, narrowing her eyes and leaning in towards Steve.

Steve never, ever tried to ditch a meeting or pawn off a mission on another team, not even when any other reasonable person would. Natasha had even tried to push for Steve’s limit on it once, scheduling a briefing for Christmas Eve, and a week-long mission on Steve’s birthday, and Steve had showed up for both, without a single comment on the inconvenient timing, and no evident signs of resentment, just his usual vaguely unhappy professional demeanor. She’d felt bad enough anyway that she hadn’t done it again. 

“Since he wants to spend his every waking moment sucking face with Barnes, probably,” said Sam.

“That’s not why! I just—”

Sam crossed his arms and cut Steve off. “He will almost definitely be here when we get back, and he’ll be at work most of the time we’re gone anyway. Find some chill, Steve. I know you’ve had an emotional reunion or whatever, but he’s not ditching his job for you, you shouldn’t ditch yours for him.”

“Right, but—”

“I’ll stay here. We’ll get to know each other, it’ll be great,” said Natasha, and smiled. She thought she’d managed to look reassuring, but Steve looked a little uneasy even if he didn’t immediately object. “Anyway, I want to go over all the data Barnes has collected, see about getting him some more computing bandwidth to crunch numbers. He’s doing good work cutting off HYDRA’s money spigots. Now that we know it’s him, we can coordinate better with Interpol and the FBI…”

* * *

By lunchtime, they had a pretty firm plan of action for the next few weeks. Natasha would have felt better about it if Barnes himself wasn’t still such an unknown. She’d have to try to get his measure while Steve was gone tomorrow, and do it without spooking Barnes into running. If he wasn’t here when Steve got back, Natasha was pretty sure Steve would have a nervous breakdown, and kill her besides. He seemed antsy enough about being apart from Barnes for even a day or two, which was probably going to be real fun for Sam to deal with. 

“Did you know about Steve’s decades’ long tragic love for Barnes?” Natasha asked Sam over the last few bites of lunch.

“Does it count if I asked him if he and Barnes were more like Meredith and McDreamy or Meredith and Cristina, and Steve said Meredith should leave McDreamy and run away with Cristina?”

“What?” None of that made sense to Natasha.

“I thought you said we weren’t going to tell Natasha about that,” hissed Steve to Sam. Then he turned to Natasha with a crooked sort of smile. “And anyway, it wasn’t tragic, it just—was. I never told anybody. I’m sorry if it was relevant to the mission, or interfered with—”

Natasha cut him off, annoyed. “No, you were right earlier, we all knew you were compromised, the specifics or how or why didn’t particularly matter.”

Sam glared meaningfully at Steve, and widened his eyes. Steve’s brow furrowed in confusion, and he raised his eyebrows in an obvious _what?_ For fuck’s sake. They were both so bad at being covert. Natasha left them to it though, because honestly, this was kind of funny.

After a fair amount of (very entertaining) eyebrow waggling and glaring, Sam gave up and said, “Natasha is hurt that you never mentioned this personal and important thing because she thought you two were friends now and shared that kind of thing. Do none of you communicate?”

“I’m not _hurt_ ,” protested Natasha, and then, because she couldn’t help herself and goddammit, this was really bugging her, “But you might have at least _mentioned_ you were into guys too when I was trying to set you up with someone.”

“I didn’t really want to be set up with anyone, so….” Sam got a dangerous look on his face, so Steve hastily course-corrected to, “But I am sorry! I know I don’t, uh, share much.”

Natasha let him squirm for a bit before she shrugged and said, “I don’t share much either,” because she didn’t. Most of her personal stories about her past were real downers. She could pick and choose safe lies from any number of covers, but Steve and the team knew who and what she was. Everybody did, now.

So Natasha didn’t hide behind pretty lies anymore, she just maintained what she hoped was an aura of dangerous mystery, but which, in actuality, felt more like one of those facades on a soundstage: the appearance of a real home, but nothing inside it except for some stray lighting rigs and old props. Steve, Natasha now realized, had been in a not dissimilar position after being defrosted. Of course he hadn’t shared much about himself; all his personal stories were downers too. Too much of Steve Rogers had been bound up in grief.

“We can...keep not sharing much and still be friends?” said Steve with that stupidly charming wry grin of his.

Natasha’s half smile bloomed into a full one, and she laughed, nodded. “Sure. Sounds perfect to me.” She really did love Steve sometimes.

“Oh my god. You know what, whatever. Whatever works for y’all.”

* * *

Steve and Sam left for New York early the next morning, but not before Steve and Barnes had spent a good five minutes wrapped up in each other, and Natasha would have joked about young love or toning down the sexual tension, but there was something too desperate in the way they held on, in the way Barnes’ fist was clenched in the fabric of Steve’s shirt, the way Steve’s face was tucked against Barnes’ neck. Sam looked away to give them their privacy, but Natasha watched. This was intel too, in its own way. Eventually Barnes murmured _I gotta go teach_ , and Steve let him go with one last, long kiss, his hand terribly gentle on Barnes’ face as Barnes leaned in and held on. When Steve pulled back, he and Barnes both visibly tucked away all that clingy desperation. They were, Natasha realized, used to hiding how much they wanted each other. Steve even managed not to look back as he and Sam drove away.

Barnes left her in his makeshift ops center, telling her to help herself and that he’d be back in the late afternoon. The sharp and knowing look he gave her on his way out the door suggested he knew what she’d do with free rein of his place, so she didn’t feel that bad about tossing his small house as neatly and carefully as she could.

There wasn’t much to find. The place was, charitably put, minimalist, most everything there for an obviously utilitarian purpose. But the bed was big, with soft and comfortable pillows and sheets, and though the freezer and cabinets were full of precooked meals and protein bars, there was plenty of evidence that Barnes actually cooked too, along with a ton of fresh fruit in the fridge. He was trying hard to be a person then, someone who looked after himself with care. If this place wasn’t quite a home, it was way more than just a squat or a wholly anonymous safe house. Safe houses didn’t have dorky photos of high school mathletes on the fridge, and okay, wow, Barnes’ mustache had really been something, huh. The longer she looked at it, the more hilarious it got.

Mustache aside, the most evidence of personality was in all the books that neatly colonized every room, and that covered a charmingly wide and eclectic range of topics: there was the expected 21st century catch up stuff, along with pop non fiction, post-modern poetry, pulpy sci fi paperbacks, an assortment of Westerns, and a handful of scientific journals that wouldn't have been out of place in Tony’s lab. Plus, enough books on teaching and math education to support a masters degree in education, probably.

There were, of course, weapons stashes too, knives and guns in the same kinds of places Natasha would have put them, and a go-bag hidden behind a false wall in the hall closet. Standard, as safe houses went, with no creepy surprises. The garage was as close as it got to creepy, but even what Sam called Barnes’ “wall of crazy” was just evidence of an ordered investigation. Natasha was sure Barnes was tucking away his real crazy somewhere, but wherever it was, he’d hidden it well, or kept it elsewhere. She’d find it eventually.

* * *

Barnes got back in the late afternoon, as promised.

“So, do I pass?” he asked, leaning against the doorway into the garage.

“You’re a real, live boy, Bucky Barnes. Or at least, very good at faking it.”

He grinned at her a little, and tipped his head towards the house in invitation. “Little of both, probably. Guessing you still wanna talk to me though. There’s some stuff you oughta know.”

She followed him back into the house. “Stuff Steve doesn’t know?”

“Yeah. You were in the Red Room, right? One of the little girls.” Natasha’s steps faltered. She didn’t remember ever seeing him when she was a child.

“Yes. Were you—”

“They kept me in Siberia most of the time, but I remember seeing the Widows once, when I was getting shown off to Department X. You know—you know what it’s like, being—” he stopped with a grimace, and gestured vaguely. Yeah. She knew.

“Yes,” said Natasha, and returned Barnes’ grimace. “We have some shared life experiences.”

“You got out too. Got free of the Red Room.”

“I defected, yeah. Got brought in by SHIELD. Which ended up being more of a lateral move, I guess, except for the Avengers.”

They got to the kitchen, and Barnes stopped, crossing his arms. “You didn’t know though. About HYDRA.” He watched her closely now, and it felt a lot like being in the crosshairs of his scope. Natasha let him look, let him see her anger and shame.

“No. Some spy I am, right?”

She didn’t bother to keep a lid on her bitterness. She’d gone over it again and again since Insight, as she helped Maria, Sharon, and Fury clean up the mess of SHIELD: _should I have known? How could I have not known?_ Rumlow, Rollins, Sitwell, Jane in HR, Hank the night shift quartermaster, Amy the nurse...all HYDRA. And Natasha had never suspected a damn thing.

Barnes shrugged. “You did the right thing when it counted,” he said, more softly than she’d expected. The generosity of it surprised her too; Barnes of all people had a right to hold onto anger about just how many people had failed to see the HYDRA rot. “Thank you, by the way. For killing Pierce.”

“I don’t often get thanked for killing someone,” said Natasha with a smile. “But you’re welcome.”

Barnes gave her a small smile back and relaxed the tense set of his shoulders a little, uncrossing his arms. She’d passed some test of his, apparently. He went to the kitchen table, and pulled a book out of the messenger bag he’d taken to work that morning.

“This is why I tracked Karpov down and killed him.”

Natasha joined him at the kitchen table, and examined the book. It was red, with a black star on the cover, not too big or thick. She’d have assumed it was someone’s journal or planner if she’d seen it any other context. She was guessing this wasn’t Karpov’s datebook though. Barnes slid it across to her. His face was carefully blank, save for how tightly he was clenching his jaw. She flipped through the book, seeing familiar Cyrillic script, and some scattered German, most of it written by hand.

“What is this?” She could guess, but she wanted to hear Barnes say it.

“The Winter Soldier’s manual of use. Russian branch of HYDRA never passed it on to the Americans after they sold me to them.”

“Karpov kept it. Of course he did. Insurance?”

“Maybe, yeah. Didn’t seem like he planned to use it, it wasn’t like he’d been looking for me. When I remembered about the book, I tracked him down, stole this from his place when he wasn’t there, and then I killed him.” 

Natasha took the confession with the same calm that Barnes delivered it in. “You did it neat and clean, I’ll give you that. Why not turn him in? Thought you were going for a murder-free revenge plan and all.”

“There are trigger words. For the Soldier, to order, to control—me. Karpov knew them. They’re in the book. Ten words and I’m—nothing. A weapon.” Barnes swallowed hard, and his voice went a little shaky. “I can’t—that can’t happen. I can’t live knowing that can happen.”

Ah. There was a worst case scenario. The trigger to the gun that was the Winter Soldier, available for anyone who could pick up the damn book. “Who else knows?”

“No one, as far as I know, which maybe doesn’t count for much. But the Russian branch of HYDRA went down with Department X, and you know how that turned out. Karpov was the only one left, and this was the only book. Plus, I dodged my fair share of HYDRA agents trying to bring me back in after Insight, and none of them tried to use the words.”

Alright, maybe not so bad a worst case scenario as all that. But if the trigger words were still active, Barnes was a dangerous loaded gun, left out for the taking. Natasha and Sam had made contingency plans for getting Barnes help, but this would take more than a discreet psychotherapist or psychiatric facility. There was the team Fury had gotten together for Natasha’s own deprogramming, she supposed. They weren’t HYDRA, at least. That had been one of the first things Natasha had checked in a panic before dumping all the SHIELD/HYDRA files.

“So you need to be deprogrammed. That’s fine, I did too, when I defected from the Red Room. We can do that, we can get you help for that.”

Barnes reached for the book, opened to a page he didn’t have to leaf through the book to find, and slid it back across to her.

“I’m sort of hoping you don’t have to. I, uh, tried. On my own. So, can you, just—say the words? See if they work?”

“What do you mean you tried on your own?”

Barnes bit his lip, and blinked his big, sad blue eyes at her. “What I said. I tried to break the triggers. Can’t entirely know if it worked, so I’d like you to say them. Figure it’d be best to do when Steve isn’t here to get all weird about it.”

That didn’t really explain anything, but whatever, she could go back to just how he broke the triggers on his own later. “And what happens if it does work and I’ve got the Winter Soldier on my hands?”

“I, um, shouldn’t hurt you. The words, they—that’s the whole point of them. Say them, and I’m ready to comply.” He gave her a thin, grim smile.

There was something sickeningly familiar about the words as they echoed in Russian in her head. Who had said it first, Natasha wondered: the Widows or the Soldier? Never mind. It didn’t matter.

“Right. But how do I snap you out of it?”

Barnes shrugged. “Knock me out. Those electrical thingies of yours pack a punch.”

“This is...such a terrible idea,” said Natasha as a whole book’s worth of new and exciting worst case scenarios started running through her head. “I’m not doing this until you tell me the whole story.”

“What, since like, 1945? Because that’s...” Barnes’ shoulders hunched with defensive tension and he shook his head, short and sharp. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“No, not the _whole_ , whole story. Just since you got to Cleveland to take out Karpov.”

“Right,” said Barnes, and his shoulders came back down to something that could pass for relaxed, if you didn’t look so closely at the way he was wringing his hands. “So. I tracked Karpov here, did some surveillance. Figured out he was out of the game, just trying to stay out of the whole HYDRA shitshow, far as I could tell. I waited until I knew he’d be gone, then went in to look for the book. I figured he’d keep it close to him. It’s the most valuable thing he’s got, intel-wise. Took a while to find it in there, I had to go back a few times, actually. But I got the book, rigged his heater up to kill him, and left.”

“Nice,” said Natasha, and meant it. It wasn’t exactly how she’d have done it, but a quiet case of CO poisoning was smart, given that Barnes couldn’t risk coming face to face with Karpov. “You managed all this while teaching all those high school kids?”

Barnes shook his head. “I could do the surveillance remotely, so I set that up to record while I was teaching. I tossed Karpov’s place whenever he went out, and it didn’t conflict with work. He was a big soccer fan, you know? European leagues. He’d go out to bars to watch the matches, so I had some guaranteed two-hour windows.”

Alright, not a bad plan, but— “This all would have been so much easier if you weren’t working around your ridiculous cover.”

“My ridiculous cover is one of the only fucking things keeping me sane.”

Natasha tilted her head, studying him: the way he’d folded his hands together carefully, the deliberate neutrality of his face. It was his eyes that gave him away, too expressive; his pain and his weariness showed there, in the faint tension at their corners. Barnes smiled at her, quick and pained.

“How’d you try breaking the trigger words then?”

“Waited until school was out for winter break, locked myself up in an abandoned warehouse, and went at it.” Barnes was wringing his hands what had to be painfully hard now, looking down at the book. “I’d done some research, figured extinction therapy, or the closest I could manage to it on my own, was my best bet. So I just read the words, over and over and over again, until it stopped hurting so bad when I did. And, you know, you can have a computer do text to speech? So I did that with the words in English for a few days, then went one by one with the words in Russian. It, uh, wasn’t—” Barnes’ throat worked, and his mouth twisted, but he didn’t say what it wasn’t, and just swallowed hard, shaking a little. “Anyway, that’s—I had the computer read all the words, in order, until—until I didn’t feel like I was about to—” Barnes stopped, took a few deliberately deep breaths. “Eventually, nothing happened to me. So. I think it worked. But. Can’t be sure.”

Natasha thought about her own deprogramming with SHIELD, how hard she’d fought against it. She’d thought she was free of the Red Room, had been brought in proud and wild, thinking she’d defected, thinking she’d chosen to let Clint take her, thinking the Red Room had no hold on her anymore. She had been so fucking naive. They’d made her, they didn’t have to have a hold on her to live in her. It had taken three months in SHIELD’s secure psych facility until she was fully debriefed, deprogrammed, and given the all clear. When it had all been over, she’d felt like a hollow thing, like people would be able to hear her cavernous, empty spaces whistling and howling with every blowing wind.

Clint had made all of it bearable. He’d come to talk to her, every day, like she was a person, like she was his friend. Undeterred by her silence or screaming or cursing, he’d talk about small, inconsequential things: his dog Lucky, some ridiculous show called Dog Cops, how much better SHIELD cafeteria food had gotten since Agent Almeida got back from that undercover op at the CIA (not that one, the other one, the culinary one), what it was like growing up on the road as a carnie. And Nick had talked to her too, like she was just one of his agents going through a rough patch, and not the deadliest Black Widow of them all.

But Barnes...he’d done it on his own. Natasha admired him for it, a little. Mostly she thought he was insane to have tried it. Desperate times, desperate measures, sure, but this was more or less on par with self-surgery. A+ for effort, she supposed, and she couldn’t fault his commitment to breaking free of HYDRA. Still, she had to swallow down her first inclination to tell Barnes _you should’ve come to us_.

“So you just DIY’d your own deprogramming,” she said carefully, hoping he couldn’t hear the _you total crazy person_ lingering unsaid at the end of her non-question, or if he could, that he wouldn’t get all weird about it.

“Yeah.”

“And just...went back to teaching teenagers math right after?”

Barnes frowned at her. “Yeah. What else was I gonna do?”

“Uh, try to process your trauma? Take a break? I don’t know. Something.”

“What did you do?” he asked, more curious than combative.

“Fury packed me off with Hawkeye to go try out being a normal person for a while.”

She’d laughed with absolute incredulity when she’d gotten to Barton’s farm, but the joke had turned to sour panic when she’d seen Laura and baby Lila. Natasha hadn’t known what to do, had cycled through about ten different covers and angles in the first couple weeks on the farm before Laura had sat her down with some carrots to chop and said _I don’t expect you to be anything but exactly what you are, so you can stop with all the rest of that, Natasha_.

 _I’m a liar and a murderer_ , Natasha had told her, knife in hand, terrified that she’d have to use it.

_You murdered anyone lately?_

_No._

_Wanted to?_

_No._

_There you go then. And as for lying...you haven’t been allowed to keep any truths of your own, Natasha. You deserve the chance to look for them._

She knew she’d been silent too long, remembering, but Barnes waited patiently until she returned her attention to him.

“Yeah. Teaching, this life,” he gestured around the little house. “That’s my trying to be a normal person, to have a life. And it’s mine, now. Not Sergeant Barnes’ from before, or the Winter Soldier’s. Just mine. So I went back even though I looked like shit, and felt like it too, but I told everyone I’d gotten the flu over break and was still getting over it, and they bought it. And I got to, y’know, spend my time doing something more useful than losing my shit.”

The pained, self-deprecating little grin he gave her was horribly charming, and she smiled back.

“Fair enough. There are worse distractions, I suppose. And it seems like you’re doing alright at this being a person thing.”

“Thanks,” he said, with frankly too much sincerity. “So can you say the words? Will you, I mean? I have to know. If they still work, I have to, I can’t—”

“Hey, it’s alright. We’ll try it out, I’ll say them. Just give me a minute to get ready, alright?” Barnes shut his eyes tight and nodded, and she went to go get her Widow’s bites, making a lot of carefully audible sound on the way.

When she got back, Barnes was sitting exactly where she’d left him, staring at the book and shaking a little. She wondered if she should get him a blanket or something. If this went wrong, like it probably would, Steve was going to be so mad at her. Fuck, she hoped they’d get out of this with nothing worse than a post-knockout headache for Barnes and an uncomfortable adrenaline rush for her.

“You ready?” she asked. Barnes nodded without looking at her. “Barnes. Bucky. I really need to hear you say it before I do this. Is this okay?”

“Yes.”

She took the book, and read the words to herself first. By themselves, they were innocuous, just disconnected and out of place enough to never be likely to come up together on their own. A little cruel though, to use words like _longing_ and _homecoming._ She powered up her Widow’s bites, took a breath, and started to read aloud.

“ _Longing. Rusted. Seventeen_ …” Barnes bowed his head and started shaking so hard the wooden kitchen chair rattled against the floor, and he was breathing heavily, gasping for air almost. When she finished, she watched him warily. The book said he was supposed to say ‘ready to comply.’ “Barnes? Bucky?”

“Yeah.” He looked up with wet, red-rimmed eyes. “It’s me.”

“Do ten jumping jacks,” she ordered.

He twitched a little, but said, faintly, “...no.” He blinked a few times, then said it more firmly. “No.”

Alright, so far, so good. Now to make sure it was Barnes in there. Steve would be so pissed if she’d just reset him to HYDRA factory default or something. “What class do you teach first period?”

“Calculus.”

“What’s your favorite student’s name?”

“I don’t have _favorites_ ,” said Barnes, hilariously appalled.

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “You love all your students equally?”

Barnes frowned at her, the reference going over his head. Guess he hadn’t gotten to Arrested Development yet.

“They’re all good kids.” There was something of Steve in the way he said it, maybe in his disapproving eyebrows or his conviction, and it gave Natasha a brief, dizzying perspective shift. She wondered how many of Steve’s mannerisms and sayings were borrowed from Barnes, and vice versa.

“Yeah, okay, congrats. It worked.” Barnes let out a gasping sort of laugh and slumped over the table, bringing his hand up to press at his temple.

“Thank you. But you don’t have to sound so surprised,” he muttered.

“You okay?”

“My head really hurts.”

Shit, she hoped he wasn’t about to stroke out or something. “Any trouble seeing? Hey, look at me for a sec, Barnes.” He made a cranky groaning noise. “Barnes, I swear, Steve will literally murder me if something happens to you while he’s gone, I’d like to make sure you’re not about to stroke out here.”

“You’re just like Wilson,” he grumbled, but lifted his head up, squinting. “Haven’t had a seizure in a year, I’m fine, I just gotta sleep it off.”

“A _seizure_ —how are you still _alive_ ,” she muttered as she checked his pupil response and reactions. Everything seemed normal to her.

“I’m going to bed, stay as long as you want,” said Barnes, and stood up, swaying a little on his feet.

Natasha held out her hands, ready to catch him if he fell. “Whoa there, let me help you.” She walked him over to the bedroom, where he promptly curled up under the covers so that only a little bit of his dark hair peeked out from under the blanket. “Need anything?” she whispered.

A mumbling that mostly resolved into _water, trash can_ , drifted out from the blanket burrito, and by the time she left those for him, it seemed like he was asleep, or making a valiant effort at it. She left him to it, and went back to the kitchen, where the seemingly innocuous red book still sat on the kitchen table.

She read the book, of course. Intel was intel, no matter how horrifying, and this book was plenty horrifying, more so even than the Winter Soldier file she’d tracked down for Steve. A few pages in, she made the command decision that Steve could never see this book. A third of the way in, and she had to take a break. She went to check on Barnes, who seemed fine in his blanket nest. He was breathing, anyway, and he hadn’t made use of his barf bucket.

When she got back to the kitchen, she had a text from Steve: _is bucky okay? He’s not answering my texts. Sleeping off a headache, but he’s alright_ , she answered, and hoped it wasn’t a lie. Steve texted back with a curt _thanks_.

After the fifth dispassionate description of just how far Barnes’ serum-enhanced body could be pushed before it shut down, Natasha began to skim, flipping pages fast enough to almost rip them. Some of this she’d already seen in the Winter Soldier file she’d given to Steve, enough that she trusted this book’s authenticity. She kept flipping through: going into cryostasis procedure, how often the Soldier could and should be wiped, when to use the trigger words and when not to, coming out of cryostasis procedure, and, okay, the one possibly useful thing in all of this, some schematics and information on Barnes’ metal arm. The rest though—Natasha hoped, for Barnes’ sake, that he didn’t remember all of this.

 _A manual of use_ , Barnes had called the red book. Natasha had read operating system manuals with more humanity than this. She kept going though, just in case there was some other nasty surprise like the trigger words. She didn’t find anything but some diagrams of trackers, which she made a note to ask Barnes about. She was inclined to trust him now, at least. Unless he had a mind twistier than some sort of five-dimensional corkscrew, there was no way he’d hand this book over to her if he was playing her and Steve, so she was back down to the normal number and kinds of worst case scenarios.

By the time she was done with the book, it was almost dark out, and she heard Barnes stirring in the bedroom, and a couple minutes later he came out with a ridiculous case of bedhead. Between that and the sleepy eyes, he looked about five years old.

“Feeling better?”

“Yeah.” He went to the kitchen, poured himself some juice, and came back to the table.

“Steve texted, he’s probably worrying about you.”

“He fusses too much,” said Barnes, but he pulled his phone out and texted Steve back, and smiled softly down at the immediate response he got back.

“Book says you have trackers, get rid of those?”

“Yeah, one of the first things I did. Didn’t need the book for that.”

They sat in silence as Barnes sipped at his juice and tapped out a few more texts to Steve.

“So. What do you want to do with it?” she asked.

“Burn it.”

“There’s some stuff about your arm that might be helpful later.”

Barnes shook his head. “Don’t care. I want to burn it. Before Steve gets back. He shouldn’t see that.”

“No, he shouldn’t.” Barnes nodded decisively now, drained the rest of his juice, and grabbed the book. He went to the kitchen to get a lighter, then headed for the garage, and Natasha followed.

“You want company for this?” she asked as he opened the garage door a crack and emptied out a small trash can.

Barnes just shrugged, so Natasha stayed, watched him tear out page after page of the book and set the lighter’s flame to them before he dropped them, burning, into the trashcan. The little fire started snapping and popping, growing enough to cast eerie shadows on Barnes’ too-blank face as pale smoke began to drift through the garage. There was enough evil and pain bound up in that book that Natasha almost expected something else to happen, some even more visible sign of breaking one of HYDRA’s last grips on Barnes. But the book just burned like normal paper. The old manor that had housed the young Widows had burned just like a normal house too, but Natasha had stood and watched until it was rubble and ash anyway. Eventually Barnes just tore big chunks of the notebook out and tossed them into the flames, until he was left with only the leather cover.

Watching the book burn felt a little like watching a funeral pyre, with Barnes as the mourner, though she couldn’t be sure what it was he was mourning, or if he was at all. The small, trembling shake of his shoulders was silent, and his face was in shadow. When the fire burned out, he tossed the leather cover of the book on the embers, and walked out.

She hoped, for Barnes’ sake, that he was free now. If such a thing were possible, anyway. Maybe it wasn’t. Every time Natasha thought that was it, she was free of the Red Room, it was definitely over and done and a part of her past that she could choose to keep there, the universe proved her wrong. Whatever she burned, whoever she killed, the Red Room lived on, in her, if nowhere else. In her worst moments, she thought the Red Room was a pit she could not climb out of, that it was the only truth about her that mattered. Maybe it was. She wasn't like Barnes, there was no Natalia from before what the Red Room had made of her. What she was, she was all the way through, no untouched core of her to remember or draw from.

She had her choices though. Right or wrong, those were hers now. She hoped they were falling more on the right side lately.

Natasha poured some water on the ashes before following Barnes back inside.

* * *

She didn’t see Barnes again for the rest of the night, but she stayed anyway, mostly to make sure there wouldn’t be any unpleasant, delayed side effects of trying those trigger words. She catnapped on the couch, keeping her Widow’s bites on and a gun and knives within reach of her hands. The night passed uneventfully though, apart from the Red Room’s ever-present undercurrent ready to tug her under to terrible memories. For the first time in a long time, she felt the phantom bite of a cuff around her wrist, felt the urge to say _ready to comply_.

But she was free, and the Winter Soldier was free. She had helped free him, a little like Clint and Laura and Nick had helped her. Freedom, she reminded herself, was possible.

In the morning, Barnes didn’t comment on her having stayed, just poured her a cup of coffee.

“You look like shit,” she observed. He’d had a sleepless night, judging by how drawn and haggard he looked. She probably didn’t look much better.

Barnes nodded, and didn’t meet her eyes, instead communing with his coffee like he was sorely tempted to drown in it. “Bad night.”

“Me too,” she said, and shrugged, smiled a little when Barnes’ eyes flew up to meet hers in surprise. “It’s not the same, but. You know. I’ve been where you are, sort of.”

“Is this the part where you say it gets better?” He closed his eyes, rubbed at his forehead. For a moment, the pain on his face or some trick of the early morning light reminded her of the Winter Soldier in cryo, a harsh gauntness to his otherwise handsome features.

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know if it gets better. Gets easier, maybe. I think you’re doing alright, though. You’re definitely being a productive member of society, so congrats on that.”

Barnes sighed and gave her a sad smile that was an awful lot like Steve’s sad smiles. “And I hear you saved the world from aliens one time. Congrats on that.”

“Just trying to balance my personal ledger.”

“Not sure accounting works like that,” joked Barnes weakly.

“Hoping redemption does though.”

Barnes just closed his eyes and nodded, and they both sipped at their coffee in comfortable, tired silence for a while. She could tell Barnes was girding himself for the day.

“You good to go to work?” she asked.

“Yeah. Steve texted, said he’d be back tonight. You staying here ‘till then?”

“If that’s alright, I’d like to get some work done, and your whole bat cave set up is pretty convenient.”

Barnes eyes brightened into a small smile. “Sure. Help yourself to any food or whatever. Thank you, by the way. For yesterday.”

“You’re welcome.”


	7. stand and deliver

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam snorted. “Rappin’ with Cap? What kind of white nonsense—”
> 
> “Wait for it,” said Bucky.
> 
> Oh no. Steve should have known Bucky wouldn’t let this go after seeing just one of the PSAs. He’d just hoped that Bucky wouldn’t spread Steve’s public service shame around, or maybe that he’d find the rest of them too cringeworthy to even laugh at. That had, clearly, been a fool's hope.
> 
> “So your body’s changing. Believe me, I know how that feels.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that I've actually [seen the Rappin' with Cap PSAs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohwJduwiAkk) they filmed for Spiderman: Homecoming, obviously I had to incorporate them into a fic again.

Steve was glad that Sam and Bucky got along, he really was. Two of his best friends, getting along and having each other’s backs: it was the happy future Steve had hoped desperately for during the long search for Bucky. Sure, they bickered a lot, and Sam still took every opportunity to complain about Bucky’s parking and to make Flanders references, while Bucky would not let Sam forget that he had totally fallen for Bucky’s cover. But whatever heart to heart they’d had after the zombie mine situation (and probably the new car Bucky had gotten Sam) seemed to have gone a long way towards encouraging a friendship.  

So yeah, a warm and expanding glow of happiness filled Steve’s chest when he got home to find Bucky and Sam lounging on the couch together, laughing. At least, it did until he got a look at what they were laughing at. 

The _Rappin’ with Cap: Your Changing Body_ title logo loomed large on the screen. Shit. They’d found the PSAs he’d done about puberty and sex ed. Steve’s glow of happiness was replaced with cringing dread.  

Sam snorted. “Rappin’ with Cap? What kind of white nonsense—”

“Wait for it,” said Bucky.

Oh no. Steve should have known Bucky wouldn’t let this go after seeing just one of the PSAs. He’d just hoped that Bucky wouldn’t spread Steve’s public service shame around, or maybe that he’d find the rest of them too cringeworthy to even laugh at. That had, clearly, been a fool's hope.

“So your body’s changing. Believe me, I know how that feels.” This had been Steve’s least favorite of all the PSAs. Not out of any sense of prudery, but god, it had been badly written, and not even informative. It had also been the point at which he began to quite sincerely consider the prospect that he was dead, and all his post-thawing out experiences were just hell. “Hi, I’m Captain America. If you’re watching this video, your parents have elected for you not to be present in the health class for the discussion of…human reproduction.”   

There was a long beat of silence from Sam and Bucky before they burst into hysterics.

“How did I not know about these?” gasped Sam through his laughter. Bucky was too overcome to even make a sound; he was just shaking silently with the force of his laughter.

Steve was this close to turning around and leaving again, but then Bucky spotted him in the entryway. Bucky’s face was flushed from laughing so hard, his eyes bright and sparkling with hilarity, and that wasn’t a sight Steve would easily forego, even if it was at his expense. 

Steve sighed. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. I did it for the youths.”

“The youths!” Bucky crowed. “Steve, I swear to god, I’m going to sneak into one of the health classes and film students’ reactions to this shit. Or maybe I’ll just play the math one on a loop during my classes.” 

“Where did you even find them?” Steve had really hoped that all these PSAs were just moldering in the AV departments of schools across the nation. Surely they weren’t actually effective in any way. Well, maybe the ones for the little kids were. Steve was pretty sure it was mostly the teenagers who thought he was deeply uncool.

“They’re all on Youtube. Along with hundreds of hilarious remixes,” said Sam, and brought the Youtube search page up on screen.

“Oh no. No.”

“Oh _yes_ ,” said Sam with a wide grin as he hit play on the result with the most hits.

“STOP. DROP. AND ROLL,” blared the TV in a distorted version of Steve’s voice. A heavy bass line pounded behind some remixed version of the Rappin’ with Cap music as glitchy video of the PSA played.

“I think the youths call this dubstep,” said Bucky with wide eyes. 

The video made an eye-searing transition to what looked like...jesus, security camera footage of Steve in uniform? Steve didn’t recognize the mission, but he was wearing his stealth suit, and, yeah, he was rolling into a somersault.

“SAY IT WITH ME NOW: ROLL. ROLL. ROLL. ROLL,” the video commanded, as the footage of Steve rolling rewound and replayed, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.

“Where did they get that footage?” asked Steve.

“Natasha’s SHIELD data dump, probably. There were a lot of mission files in that,” said Sam absently, watching the video with rapt attention. Was it just Steve’s imagination, or was the video zooming in on his ass?

They all went silent under the video’s audiovisual assault. The video manipulation was skillful, Steve supposed, with everything on beat and all those effects. The sound, though, was nightmarish, like some sort of robot hell. A horribly catchy robot hell.

“I’m actually into this song,” said Bucky, head tilted. “I could work out to this.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Sam.

A grim future of hearing this abomination of a song with distressing regularity stretched out before Steve. Why was Steve friends with these assholes. 

On the video, a voice shrieked “FIRE IN THE DISCO!” and then flames were superimposed on Steve’s rolling body as the music plumbed even deeper depths of robot hell, and Steve’s own voice, more distorted still, boomed out, “STOP DROP AND ROLL.”

“This is art,” said Bucky in a hushed whisper. Sam nodded mutely.

“Okay, that’s enough, haha, Steve had to make terrible PSAs that people have repurposed into terrible music, we can stop watching now.”

“No,” chorused Sam and Bucky.

Steve sighed. 

* * *

To Steve’s relief, not everything Sam and Bucky watched together was meant to torment him. With school out for the summer, Bucky had a lot more free time, especially since his HYDRA revenge efforts were in a lull. He was waiting for some of his digital and financial traps to catch their prey, and Steve, Sam, and Natasha were waiting for the Strucker op to wind its way through the halls of international diplomacy and bureaucracy to get approval, so they all had down time to spare. 

Natasha ditched them to go visit Clint, who was apparently also somewhere in the Midwest. The rest of them stayed in Cleveland. Sam, determined that someone other than Bucky’s teenaged students should direct the course of Bucky’s pop culture education, took it upon himself to help get Bucky up to speed on the 20th and 21st centuries via movies. That was the initial idea, anyway. In practice, the movies just provided more avenues for Sam and Bucky’s bickering.

Steve was just grateful for the distraction, for both himself and Bucky. Their current down time made Bucky nervy and quiet, too stuck in his own head, led to too many nights of bad sleep. It reminded Steve uncomfortably of the war, when leave hadn’t seemed to do Bucky any good. He’d been more hollow-eyed and haunted after a week’s leave than before it. At least if he was arguing with Sam about the artistic merits of slow-mo, he wasn’t dwelling on his latest Winter Soldier nightmare.

“Should I be worried?” Steve asked Sam, after Bucky begged off watching _Die Hard 2_ and went to bed early.

“I am not his or your mental health professional,” retorted Sam.

“I know, I know, I just need a second opinion, as a friend. I feel like I fucked this up, back during the war. I thought he was okay then, and he wasn’t, not really. I don’t want to make the same mistake again.”

Sam narrowed his eyes and sighed, but allowed, “Yeah, alright. For what it’s worth then, I don’t think you need to be worried. It’s probably just the change to his routine. Give him some time to level out.”

Sam was right, as usual. Bucky threw himself into reading dense books on adolescent psychology and something called critical mathematics pedagogy, which apparently provided enough mental occupation to put him back on a mostly-even keel. Steve didn’t much understand any of it beyond the basics, but he didn’t care. He was too happy about the return of a much-missed habit: Bucky’s low, rough voice, murmuring into the warm dark of their bedroom about what he’d read that day, what he’d gotten up to, every weird and silly thought he’d saved to share with Steve. He’d done it during sleepovers when they were kids, and he’d done it when they’d shared rooms and beds in shitty apartments as adults, and he’d even done it in tents and barracks during the war, though then his nighttime discourse had been about 70% griping about the cold, the food, or the brass. 

The nightly ramble was all the sweeter now that Bucky was tucked in so close to Steve as he murmured sleepily: now there was the cool weight of his arm on Steve’s side, the way his ankle hooked around Steve’s. Now Steve could press small kisses to his shoulder, his neck, and be met with a pleased little hum or sigh. 

One night, Bucky apologized, whispering, “Sorry, I’m keeping you up,” but Steve just pulled him in close and tight, and whispered back, “Don’t be. I missed this so damn much.”

* * *

“Barnes, I will take that damn phone away from you, I swear to god. What are you constantly checking that’s more important than the cinematic masterpiece that is _The Fifth Element_?”

Steve frowned over at Bucky. He’d have thought the movie would be right up Bucky’s alley, given that it was like something out of the pulp science fiction magazines he used to read. 

Bucky put his phone down with an apologetic grimace. “Sorry. I’m just waiting on my students’ AP exam scores. They’re supposed to be emailed out to the teachers soon.”

“I’m sure they all did fine, Buck,” said Steve, giving him a hopefully comforting squeeze.

“And you can’t do anything about it now if they didn’t,” said Sam. Bucky looked stricken enough that Sam backtracked. “But most of them definitely got at least threes! Uh, a three is passing, right?”

“Yeah,” said Bucky, and checked his email on his phone again.

“Barnes!”

“Sorry, sorry!” Bucky put his phone back in his pocket, and returned his attention to the movie, burrowing into Steve’s side. A few seconds passed, then Bucky blurted out, “But what if I’m a terrible fake teacher and they all failed?”

Steve and Sam sighed in unison. Sam gave Steve a _you’re his bestie/boyfriend, this is your problem_ look.

“Bucky, you singlehandedly got me through algebra with your tutoring, and you were 16 then. You definitely taught those kids well enough for them to pass their exam. And if some of them didn’t pass, it’s not your fault.”

Bucky hummed dubiously, but he only checked his email again twice for the rest of the movie.

* * *

Bucky only got more nervous and antsy about his students’ scores as the week stretched on. At this point, Steve was pretty sure he was more nervous than any of the actual students.

“Most of your students passed your classes, didn’t they?” tried Steve. “I’m sure they did fine on the test.”

“That’s different,” protested Bucky. “Oh god, maybe I need to redo my syllabus,” he moaned, and got up as if he was about to do just that.

“Nope, nuh-uh,” said Sam, chivvying Bucky to the couch instead. “This is an intervention, Bucky. Sit your ass down, we’re watching _Stand and Deliver_. Jaime Escalante will help you renew your faith in your own teaching abilities. Hopefully.” 

“What’s _Stand and Deliver_?” asked Steve.

“It’s like an inspirational sports movie, only with math. This nerd over here will love it.”

Bucky grumbled, but he was interested enough to sit down and watch the movie. And then, miracle of miracles, he didn’t check his email once. Sam was both pleased and amused by how much Bucky seemed to like it.

“Man, I’d have thought you’d heard of this movie by now. It’s the go-to for math teachers to show when they’re feeling too lazy to actually teach.” 

When the movie got to the triumphant climax of showing how the students passed, Steve nudged Bucky. “See? It’s gonna be the same with your students.”

“Uh, movie’s not over yet, Steve,” said Sam.

“They accused them of cheating? That’s bullshit!” exclaimed Steve a few minutes later.

“That seems racist,” said Bucky, frowning.

“It is. Now shut up and watch the movie,” said Sam, so Steve and Bucky shut up.

Steve fumed at the injustice of the students having to retake the test, and he could practically feel Bucky taking that on as a new nightmare scenario for his own students, but like any good sports movie, the movie wound down to an inspiring and uplifting end.

“Feel better now, Mr. Murphy?” asked Sam as the credits rolled.

“Yeah, maybe.”

* * *

Two mornings later, Steve was woken up by two hundred pounds of very excited best friend leaping onto the bed.

“They passed! All but two of them passed!”

Steve flailed awake, only to be smothered by a full body hug as Bucky draped himself over him. Steve mumbled a congratulations into the mass of blankets and pillows and Bucky, and then Bucky excavated Steve’s face from under the covers to plant a sloppy and enthusiastic kiss on his lips. When Bucky pulled back and Steve got a look at his face, his smile was so bright that Steve had to bask in it for a long moment.

Then Steve said, “Time to celebrate,” and flipped them so Bucky was under him. Or, that was the plan anyway. Instead they got tangled up in the sheets, and pillows went flying. Bucky flopped off to the side and clutched at his stomach as he cracked up. “A little help here, Buck? Buck! Buck, c’mon!”


	8. Winter Soldier Winter Formal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Oh my god,” said Sam, straightening in his chair, eyes wide with some epiphany.
> 
> “What? What is it?” asked Bucky. He squinted at the map. Had he missed something?
> 
> “Winter Soldier Winter Formal!” Sam burst into gales of laughter at his own joke, and Steve covered his mouth to hide a smile.
> 
> Bucky gave Sam his best Winter Soldier glare, but Sam was unabashed. “What does that even mean?” Bucky grumbled, and then Steve lost the fight against hilarity and dissolved into giggles.
> 
> “You—in tac gear, glaring at kids for getting too fresh with each other—” managed Steve, and then Steve and Sam howled with fresh laughter.

“The kids are going all out for the Winter Formal this year, huh?” 

One of Bucky’s fellow math department teachers was at the faculty lounge’s table, perusing the latest edition of the student newspaper. There was an entire two-page spread devoted to the upcoming Winter Formal, to say nothing of the posters the entire school was plastered with, or the daily PA announcements. The theme, apparently, was _Midnight in Paris! A night of luxury and elegance!_  

Bucky grunted in acknowledgment, his eyes still fixed on the microwave clock ticking down. He had ten minutes to eat lunch before his scheduled meeting with Mrs. Whitley, who was probably just going to yell at him about how her precious daughter couldn’t possibly have deserved those Ds on her last two tests, and couldn’t he just give her some extra credit? Her GPA would be ruined if she got a C in Calculus! Well, maybe Katie Whitley should have thought of that before failing to study. Ugh. Parents.

Fuck it, the food was probably warm enough. He stopped the microwave and grabbed his tupperware container of last night’s chili, joining Mike at the table. After one look at Steve’s pitiful spice usage, Sam had taken over the cooking last night, so the chili had actual flavor. ( _Is this a stew?_ Sam had asked after stealing a taste. _No, it’s chili_ , Steve had replied, and Bucky had never seen Sam’s face go that forbidding. Neither had Steve, judging by the way he’d gone wide-eyed. _Get out of the kitchen_ , Sam had said with deadly evenness, and that had been that.)

“You’re chaperoning this year, aren’t you, Murphy?” asked Mike, undeterred by Bucky’s silence.

Was he? Bucky swallowed a mouthful of too-hot chili. He recalled something about a rota for chaperone duty for various school events a couple months ago. He’d put himself down for the one least likely to interfere with any HYDRA-hunting missions, a Friday night in December before the long winter break. He hadn’t paid much attention to what the event was. He checked his phone’s calendar, and there it was: _CHAPERONE WINTER DANCE_. 

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

Mike snorted. “Good luck with that. I swear the kids make these things more dramatic every year.” 

“It’s just a dance. I’m only there to make sure no one gets drunk or high, right?”

“I chaperoned the Winter Formal a couple years ago. I had to break up four fights, three couples trying to pop their cherries in the damn bathrooms, and dozens of couples dry-humping on the damn dance floor. I swear to god, you can practically smell the teenage hormones at these things.”

Damn it. Bucky had really hoped he’d be able to get away with lurking along the edges of the dance to glower or smile benevolently, as the situation warranted.

“I’m pretty sure that’s just the Axe body spray,” said Bucky with a wince. 

“Ugh,” said Mike with a shudder. “Do you think we can convince them to start using Old Spice because it’s retro and cool?”

* * *

Having now been reminded that he was going to be involved in the damn thing, Bucky started paying more attention to the Winter Formal fever that was sweeping the campus. The Winter Formal planning had already consumed a good portion of the entire student body for the better part of the fall semester. The student body president, an ambitious and intense junior, had run her campaign on a promise to provide _the best formal dance this school has ever had, for everyone! All classes allowed!_ And then there’d been a whole lot of contentious debate between the underclassmen and the upperclassmen about how unfair it was that all the upperclassmen got the best events blah blah blah. Ongoing debate aside, the student body president seemed like she was delivering on her promise, which was more than you could say for most actual politicians, even if tickets to the damn dance were an exorbitant $100.

The whole thing seemed like a way bigger deal than Bucky would have expected of a high school dance, but then, what did he know. His memories of high school were dim at best. He didn’t even know if he’d ever _been_ to a high school dance, though he had plenty of memories of going out dancing. He’d have to ask Steve.

Three weeks before the dance, the faculty advisor for the student government knocked on his open classroom door with a smile. Mrs. Larsen’s round face and steel-gray curls gave her a matronly sort of air, but Bucky had seen her around the school, and the woman moved through the world with the grim purpose and implacability of a guided missile.

“T-minus three weeks and counting until the Winter Formal! I saw you’re on the list of chaperones, thought I’d come by and make sure you’re still a yes.”

“Still a yes,” said Bucky, returning her smile. “I haven’t really chaperoned a dance before though. Uh, is there anything specific I’m supposed to be doing? Or, uh, should I be helping with the set up or anything?”

“Oh no, no, the Winter Formal committee is in charge of set up and all that. You just need to show up to the dance, and stick around for the whole thing. Your responsibilities are really only to keep an eye on the kids, check the bathrooms and back doors every so often, make sure no one’s getting up to any funny business, that kind of thing.”

“Alright. Seems simple enough.”

“It is! I don’t know why it’s always like pulling teeth to get teachers to sign up for chaperone duty.” That made a shiver of foreboding run down Bucky’s spine, but too late to back out of doing this now. “Oh, and feel free to bring a date! A nice meal out is a nice meal out, you know? Just shoot me an RSVP if you’re bringing someone so I can make sure we’re covered on food and place settings.”

“I’ll be bringing someone,” blurted out Bucky. “Um. My boyfriend. If that’s not a problem.”

Mrs. Larsen blinked, then smiled again, warmer now. “That’s not a problem at all. So long as you both wear a suit and tie!”

* * *

A couple days later, Bucky, Steve, and Sam were in the garage tossing around options for their next raid on HYDRA.

“Natasha sent a few possibilities over this morning. Think you could come along as backup for any of these?” asked Steve as he marked the locations on a map.

Bucky looked them over. “Not until winter break for these,” he said, tapping all the ones that would take more than a day’s drive. “Detroit though...that’s close.”

Sam scrolled through the intel Natasha had sent over. “Might be more than a weekend job. Some HYDRA stragglers who’ve teamed up with AIM, looks like.”

“We wouldn’t need Buck for all of it. Leave on Friday night, take out the labs by Sunday, and we can handle the clean up afterwards while Buck heads back. Let’s say...two, three weeks from now?”

“Can’t do it three weeks from now,” said Bucky, shaking his head. “I’m, uh, chaperoning the Winter Formal that Friday night.”

“Oh my god,” said Sam. “Your career provides endless delights. You’re _chaperoning_?”

“Winter Formal?” asked Steve.

“High school dance. They’ve rented out an entire banquet hall, and they’re having a nice dinner catered and a dance, the whole nine yards. The theme is Midnight in Paris. It’s cute.” 

A lot of the kids were pretending not to be excited about it, but Bucky had overheard enough discussions about the merits of this dress or that dress, or whether or not to wear a tux, that he knew they were more invested than they liked to pretend. Hell, one of his mathletes had asked him for advice on how to ask his crush out. _You have a boyfriend, right? How’d you ask him out?_ Ha. Bucky was pretty sure _we fought some zombies then had an emotional conversation after years of torture, brainwashing, and freezing and then we started necking_ was not an appropriate answer for a nerdy kid whose crush was _one of the coolest kids in the band, oh my god, he’s so out of my league_. 

“Jeez. All that for a high school dance?”

“Oh my god,” said Sam, straightening in his chair, eyes wide with some epiphany.

“What? What is it?” asked Bucky. He squinted at the map. Had he missed something?

“Winter Soldier Winter Formal!” Sam burst into gales of laughter at his own joke, and Steve covered his mouth to hide a smile.

Bucky gave Sam his best Winter Soldier glare, but Sam was unabashed. “What does that even mean?” Bucky grumbled, and then Steve lost the fight against hilarity and dissolved into giggles.

“You—in tac gear, glaring at kids for getting too fresh with each other—” managed Steve, and then Steve and Sam howled with fresh laughter. 

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” he said, but he couldn’t help but smile at the way Steve was clutching at his chest as he laughed. And yeah, alright, the mental image of showing up to the dance in his tac gear _was_ pretty amusing. And maybe a little too tempting. Far more tempting than going shopping for a respectable suit to wear at any rate.

* * *

That night in bed, Bucky curled in close to Steve while their bed warmed up. After a mild fall, winter was sending its first real warning of the cold to come, the temperature flirting with going below freezing.

“Jesus christ, Buck, wear socks. Your feet are goddamned ice blocks,” hissed Steve.

“That’s rich coming from a former ice block,” said Bucky, and that kicked off a brief round of pleasant, breathless tussling under the sheets before Bucky gently pinned Steve.

“How is your _metal arm_ warmer than your feet? Seriously Bucky, _socks_.”

“No socks. Then I get too hot,” said Bucky, and wrapped himself more firmly around Steve, sticking said ice blocks between Steve’s calves. Steve grumbled, but obligingly made room, then tucked his face against Bucky’s shoulder. “Hey, so about the Winter Formal…” Steve hummed inquisitively, a pleasant buzz against Bucky’s skin that eased the sudden flutter of nerves in his stomach. “Wanna be my date?”

He could feel Steve’s smile. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that,” said Steve. He pressed a kiss to Bucky’s shoulder, and now Bucky smiled too, and pulled Steve in closer.

* * *

“You done getting ready?” called out Steve from the bedroom.

“Yeah, just a sec,” said Bucky, making sure his tie was straight. 

He gave himself one last critical look in the bathroom mirror: dark gray suit that was nice, but not too nice, check; his terrible dorky glasses, check; nano mesh over his left arm, check; and neatly trimmed beard to maintain his cover identity, just in case he ended up in any photos, check. And hey, he even looked pretty good.

Steve agreed, apparently, because he gave Bucky an appreciative, heated once over when Bucky came out of the bathroom. Steve himself was in an unobjectionable black suit that did excellent things for the breadth of his shoulders and his small waist. He flushed when he noticed Bucky’s equally appreciative stare.

“You look really great, Buck.”

“You too,” he said, and they smiled idiotically at each other for a long moment. Their usual date nights didn’t involve this level of dressing up, but Bucky had to admit, it made for a nice change. Steve filled out a suit nicely, and he looked sharp and sophisticated in black. Even when he was wearing Hulk-patterned socks.

“Shoes?” prompted Bucky, raising an eyebrow at Steve’s socked feet. 

“Right, yes, shoes,” said Steve, and slipped them on.

When they got out to the living room, they were greeted with a wolf whistle from Natasha. Bucky squinted at her. When the hell did she get here? Whatever. He ignored her and headed for the hall closet to get his and Steve’s coats.

“Wait wait wait, we need to take pictures!” said Sam, emerging from the kitchen with a bottle of beer. When the hell did _he_ get here? Where the hell did the beer come from? Did everyone just live in Bucky’s house now?

“What do you need pictures for?” asked Steve.

“It’s your first Winter Formal! We’re taking pictures. Here, go out on the porch.” Sam set his beer down and pulled out his phone, apparently having every intention of conducting a miniature photoshoot. 

“You know we’re there as chaperones, not to attend the dance, right? Because we’re grown-ass adult men?” asked Bucky, then he frowned and turned to Steve. “Wait, _is_ it our first Winter Formal?”

Steve smiled and said, “Yeah.”

“See! We need pictures.”

Natasha took a swig of Sam’s beer and nodded.

“ _One_ picture,” said Bucky, and they dutifully posed on the porch, red-cheeked from the cold, but smiling. 

“They grow up so fast,” sniffed Sam.

“Have him back by midnight!” called out Natasha as they left.

“Which him do you mean?” asked Steve.

“Both of you!”

* * *

Per Mrs. Larsen’s instructions, and Bucky’s own preference, they got to the dance early. Bucky did a circuit of the banquet hall perimeter with Steve first, surprising a couple of the catering staff who were on their smoke breaks by the service entrance. He didn’t expect to find anything, of course, but it was habit by now, and if he didn’t, he’d be edgy all night. Steve humored him without a word, despite the evening’s cold bite. When they actually went inside the hall’s dining room, they both stopped in their tracks. 

“Wow,” said Steve.

It was like stepping into an idealized dream of a Parisian boulevard at night: warm and sparkling lights, with plants and trees that Bucky knew had to be fake, but that in the dim and golden lighting looked real. The paths between the tables somehow looked like cobblestone, and the walls of the banquet hall were covered with lovely matte paintings of Paris landmarks. The drama department’s work, no doubt. The dinner tables were elegantly set, with real candles that one of the students was lighting. It was probably a fire hazard, and Bucky had the feeling he’d be patting out some flaming sleeves before the night was over, but it certainly looked gorgeous.

The Winter Formal committee was still running around finishing the last-minute preparations, a couple small knots of students clustered around the punch table and the DJ booth, another small group surveying the dinner tables with Mrs. Larsen. When Mrs. Larsen spotted Steve and Bucky, she waved cheerily and bustled over to them in a swish of emerald green silk.

“Jack, welcome! Or should I say, bienvenue! What do you think, have we hit the theme well?”

“Thought I stepped through a portal to Paris. This is amazing, Mrs. Larsen. Everything looks beautiful. And so do you,” said Bucky.

She flushed prettily and laughed. “I do love an opportunity to dress up! And oh, it’s all come out beautifully, thanks to the students’ hard work! But thank you. And look at you two gentlemen! So handsome. This is the boyfriend, I take it?”

“Yes, ma’am. Steve Grant. A pleasure to meet you. Or, uh, enchantè?”

Mrs. Larsen beamed at him. “Enchantè, monsieur!” 

“Do you need us to help with anything?” asked Bucky. “I know we’re pretty early.”

“I think we’re set for now! Just get all the students in their seats for the start of dinner, and handle the parents dropping off the freshmen and sophomores if they fuss.”

“Got it.”

While they waited for students to begin arriving, Bucky wandered around with Steve to get a closer look at the decorations and the paintings covering the walls. The prom committee had obviously done a lot with a little, turning Christmas lights and paint and paper mâché into something that pretty well approximated the promised _luxury and elegance._

“These are really good,” said Steve, his nose practically touching the painting. Bucky beamed with entirely misplaced proprietary pride, given he had nothing to do with the Winter Formal preparation. 

A fretful student in formalwear rushed over to nudge the painting of the Arc de Triomphe level. “It’s crooked,” she said. “And is the glitter too much? It’s too much, isn’t it. But I wanted it to sparkle a little, like from the lights?”

“It’s perfect,” said Bucky, and she smiled gratefully at him.

When the students started arriving, Bucky’s chaperoning duties started in earnest, if only to get the kids to where they needed to be for dinner to start on time. It was easy to keep a smile on his face: the teenagers all looked impossibly bright and young, decked out to the nines, boisterous in their excitement. As sophisticated as some of them probably hoped they were, to Bucky, this night seemed like a simple, keen joy, alight with a newness and innocence that Bucky hoped they could hold onto for a few more years.

He wished Steve were here at the door with him, so he could ask _were we ever this young? Were we ever this innocent?_ They must have been, but Bucky couldn’t remember it.  

Bucky kept the steady flow of teens moving, despite the occasional traffic jam when friends greeted each other with hugs and exclamations over how pretty their dresses were, or when they loitered by the door to the banquet hall to take selfies or group photos. He greeted those he knew by name, and was met with shining and nervous smiles, plus the kind of fond teasing he’d grown used to.

“Dressed for success, Mr. Murphy!” said one student, holding out a fist for a fist bump. 

“Looking sharp, Mr. M! But I miss the mustache!”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Uh huh, well, Steve doesn’t, so you’re out of luck, Matt.”

“Oh my god, Mr. Murphy, are we going to meet your hot boyfriend?!” asked Myra.

Once he answered a few parents’ questions about when and where to pick their kids up at the end of the night, and assured some more of them there would be _no_ alcohol or drugs, not on his watch, no sir, he headed inside to rejoin Steve, who was at the chaperones’ table making what looked like a game attempt at small talk with the other chaperones and their dates. Judging by the relieved smile he sent Bucky’s way when he returned, he’d been running out of safe, cover story maintaining small talk options.

The dinner itself only required a little intervention from Bucky and the other chaperones to defuse a few nascent squabbles over who sat where, and to extinguish a tiny fire when someone knocked over one of the candles. Steve beamed at him like he’d just rescued a litter of puppies from a burning building.

“My hero, Mr. Murphy,” murmured Steve from over his filet mignon. 

“Yeah, yeah. So how’s this on the date night ranking so far, above or below Netflix and chill?” asked Bucky, and grinned when Steve blushed.

When the dinner was cleared away, the music started up, and groups of students clumped together to orbit around the dance floor, while others headed towards the photo booth set up in a corner of the hall. The more experienced chaperones watched on with badly hidden amusement.

“Every year,” said Mrs. Alessi. “Every year, those kids take at least half an hour to actually get on that dance floor.”

Ted Ford, one of Bucky’s fellow math teachers, gave Bucky a friendly nudge with his elbow. “Bets on who’ll be first on the floor? I say the band kids.”

“No way,” said Coach Leeds. “The prom committee, come on, this dance is their baby.”

“Jack, your mathletes, maybe?” asked Sandy, one of his hallway neighbors, with a grin.

Bucky laughed and shook his head. He loved his kids, but they were not the life of the dance floor type. He spotted most of them drifting around in a sort of aimless Brownian motion closer to the wall than the dance floor. 

“Let me see if I can convince them. C’mon Steve, come meet my team.”

He introduced Steve around, and made an effort to get them on the dance floor, laughing when they all collectively blanched.

“I don’t see you out on the dance floor, Mr. Murphy!”

“Hey, it’s not my dance, kids!” he said, then left Steve to fend for himself against their prying questions. 

“Wait, uh, where are you going—”

Bucky dodged Steve’s grasping hand before he could grab hold of Bucky’s sleeves. “I think I see some kids up to no good, gotta go chaperone. Team, you all be nice to Steve now!” he said with a smile before abandoning Steve to the tender mercies of a half-dozen overcurious teenagers.

Steve was goddamn Captain America, he could handle a little interrogation from teenaged nerds. Probably. Anyway, Steve’s natural dancehall habitat was with the wallflowers, he’d be in good enough hands with Bucky’s mathletes.

It was early in the night for any kids to be getting up to trouble, but Bucky made a round of the banquet hall anyway, and spotted nothing worse than teenage relationship drama. By the time he was done, the DJ had finally broken the dance floor impasse by playing some song that the kids couldn’t resist dancing to, and the dance floor slowly filled up with flailing and gyrating teenagers. Not long after that, Steve texted him: _sos need exfil is mathlete club code for interrogation training_. Bucky snickered and went to rescue Steve.

While a couple of his fellow chaperones were clearly longing for the sweet peace of death, or at least sorely missing the alcohol that would make this dance more bearable, the night passed quickly for Bucky. Between keeping horny teens from getting to third base on the damn dance floor, keeping horny teens from getting past third base in the bathroom, and keeping stupid teens from getting high or drunk, plus taking endless photos for students and attempting to get Steve to socialize, Bucky was occupied enough that he didn’t notice the time passing. On the couple occasions when the noise and lights got to be too much, he dragged Steve outside into the cold with him, where Steve hissed dire things at him about how he kept abandoning him to be interrogated by terrible teenagers and nosy teachers, and how it was almost as bad as doing the stupid PSAs, but he proved easy to distract with a few long, slow kisses.

Soon enough, it was 11 PM, and Bucky and the other chaperones began to shepherd the kids out of the banquet hall. The freshmen and sophomores left without much prompting, their parents or older siblings having come to pick them back up. The juniors and seniors, having driven themselves, proved harder to kick out. They lingered in raucous groups, still taking photos and dancing, exclaiming that the night was still young. The DJ took to playing more and more downbeat songs as he set about packing up, and only then did the banquet hall start really emptying.

“After party at Denny’s! Wooo!” yelled one of the football players on his way out, eliciting a wave of cheers. That poor Denny’s, thought Bucky with a wince. 

As the students streamed out of the dance, Bucky checked in with Mrs. Larsen to see if she needed anything from him, but she waved him off, saying the prom committee would be back the next day for clean up. 

“Go get your young man, Jack, before Coach Leeds convinces him to become assistant coach.”

“Steve’s awful at football,” said Bucky automatically. Actually, he probably wasn’t, not anymore anyway, but Bucky knew Steve preferred baseball.

Mrs. Larsen raised an eyebrow. “Really? Seems like a great tight end to me.” _Oh my god_. She cackled at how Bucky’s face probably just went tomato red, and he beat a hasty retreat to go rescue Steve from Coach Leeds. 

“Hey, we’re free to go, I got the okay from Mrs. Larsen. Coach Leeds, I think she needs you for something though?” he lied shamelessly, and hustled Steve away.

“Oh thank god. I really don’t know enough about football to keep talking about it with him, but he kept insinuating I probably didn’t know much about it on account of how I’m queer and all, so I had to keep faking it and—”

“Mrs. Larsen said you seem like a great tight end,” blurted out Bucky.

“But I don’t play foot—Oh,” said Steve with wide eyes, and they both simmered in mutual mortified silence for a second before bursting into laughter.

Once their laughter died down, Bucky gave Steve an apologetic smile. “Sorry, maybe this wasn’t the best date night.”

A slow and sweet piano melody drifted out from the banquet hall’s speakers, and Steve took hold of Bucky’s hand.

“I don’t know about that, I did like meeting your students. Even if they’re all miniature interrogators. I liked seeing you with them. They adore you, you know.” Bucky shook his head, feeling suddenly shy. “And hey, date night’s not over yet. Dance with me?” asked Steve.

“Since when do you dance?”

Steve smiled at him, a painful, bruised kind of tenderness on his face, and brushed a stray piece of hair off Bucky’s forehead before pulling Bucky’s glasses off and tucking them into Bucky’s jacket pocket. 

“I think this song is about my speed. We’re just gonna be kinda swaying together, and I’ll probably still step on your feet, but—”

“I don’t mind,” said Bucky, so Steve pulled Bucky closer, and tugged him to the now almost empty dance floor. The disco ball suspended above the dance floor continued its lazy, sparkling turns, the lights around the dance floor still low and tinted blue, still midnight in Paris.

The song’s sleepy, honeyed pace was indeed too slow for much of anything but swaying in each other’s arms. Bucky didn’t care. Steve in his arms on a dance floor felt like an old, old wish, a dream some other version of him had once given up for lost.

_Fade into you,_ crooned a male voice over the speakers. _Strange you never knew._

They pressed close together, close enough that there was scarcely enough room to shuffle back and forth in a slow dance. Steve still managed to step on his toes. That little imperfection felt more precious than even the most perfect date night, because that was Bucky’s Steve: the guy who had superpowers but still got flustered enough to step on his best guy’s feet during the slowest of slow dances.

“Sorry, sorry,” whispered Steve, and Bucky smiled wide, pressed a kiss to Steve’s bearded cheek.

“It’s alright,” he murmured back, and pressed his forehead against Steve’s. 

Steve’s breath shuddered out in a sigh, and Bucky could see him shut his eyes tight, those ridiculous long lashes of his fanning out against his cheeks. They stayed like that, still swaying to the song’s slow, tripping melody. Maybe some other, younger version of Bucky had wanted a different kind of dance with Steve, a breathless and energetic lindy maybe, or something like the unashamed wildness the kids had reveled in earlier tonight. But right now, this was all Bucky wanted.

_I think it’s strange you never knew._

* * *

Two weeks later, just before school let out for winter break, Bucky got a visit from one of the yearbook kids.

“Hey Mr. Murphy, do you have a minute?”

“Sure, what’s up? Come on in. Brianna, right?”

“That’s me. So, I was taking photos for the yearbook and paper at the Winter Formal…” she said as she pulled a thin folder out of her messenger bag. 

Bucky felt a small thrill of alarm. Photos were evidence and photos could blow his cover, and what if she’d somehow looked at a photo of him, or of Steve, right next to their stupidly big pictures in the damn history book…

“And I took a bunch of shots that aren’t really going to fit into the yearbook. Just, you know, getting all artsy and fancy and stuff, I got a new camera for my birthday, and I was messing around with it at the dance, and…sorry, you don’t care. Anyway, I got a great shot of you and your boyfriend, and I wanted to get your permission to include it in my portfolio? I’m going to be applying to art schools next year, so…”

She shuffled through the photos in the folder, then slid one across the desk to him. It was him and Steve in profile, from when they were dancing at the end of the night. The light in the photo was all blue and gold, him and Steve half in shadow. It looked like the silent moment of shared breath before a kiss, and there wasn’t a single thing hidden on either of their faces. Maybe Brianna couldn’t tell, but Bucky could: it was all their grief and love, caught in that millisecond moment in the way they leaned towards each other, the curve of their lips, the way Steve’s hand clutched at his. 

“It’s a gorgeous photo, Brianna,” said Bucky, hoping his voice was even. “And of course you can use it.”

“Thank you! It’s, uh, basically the most romantic picture I’ve ever taken, so, like, I hope you two stay together? Sorry, sorry, that’s probably rude—”

“It’s alright,” he said, smiling at her. Her skin flushed dark and she fussed with her folder of photos. “Could you give me a few copies of this, actually?”

“Oh! Sure, of course! You can have that one, actually, I’ve got the digital files. I’ll email it to you too.”

“Thank you, Brianna. Really. It’s a great photo, I know Steve will love it too.”

Steve did end up loving it. Well, he kind of burst into tears first, though he pretended not to, but that meant he loved it.

“It’s just a really beautiful photo, okay?”

Bucky laughed and reeled him in for a hug. “Yeah, that was kind of my reaction too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song they're dancing to at the end is [Ben Harper's cover of Mazzy Star's "Fade Into You."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4grR95eofQ)


	9. greener than god's dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Steve had thought he didn’t mind their house’s bare walls and general lack of personality, and when set against how they had heating and plumbing that (mostly) worked, and how safe Bucky felt here, he mostly didn’t. But their house’s sparseness was starting to get to him. If Bucky had no plans or desire to move anytime soon, Steve wanted to make it feel more like a home."
> 
> Steve nests via artwork.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Sohrab Sepehri's poem "Address."

“Hey Buck, you’re planning on staying here, right?”

Bucky didn’t look up from where he was inputting grades into his grade book. “Here in the kitchen? Yeah, I’ll keep an eye on the oven, you can go next door if you want. I’ll text when the pizza’s ready.”

“No, I didn’t mean—” Shit, Steve was fucking this up already. “I meant, here, in this house. In general, not just tonight.”

Now Bucky looked up, bemused. “I own it, so yes, I’d hope I’m staying here for the foreseeable future.”

“Wait, you own it? But I see you mailing out rent checks.”

“Well, I own it through like three different shell corporations, one of which uses a property management company to rent it out to me.”

“Huh.”

“Helps establish a paper trail for me as Jack Murphy.”

“That’s smart.” Bucky shot him a small smile then returned to typing in grades. “I guess I just meant—we’ve been here almost a year now, and it still feels—temporary.”

Now Bucky stopped typing. “What do you mean?” He tensed up so abruptly he was practically vibrating, and his eyes went wide and stricken. “You’re not temporary. Us, that’s not temporary.”

“No! No, of course not, god, Bucky. We’re the opposite of temporary, I know that. I mean the house. It still feels like we’re living in a safe house.”

Bucky relaxed with a relieved sigh. “Oh.” He tapped anxiously at his laptop’s keys. “I don’t know what that means. Is this…not a normal house?”

“It is,” allowed Steve, because it _was_ a normal house. There was a kitchen and a living room and two bathrooms and two bedrooms, though they only used the one. All the rooms were furnished, and all the furniture matched, and everything was up to Bucky’s just-shy-of-obsessive tidiness standards.

But there was scarcely a single damn decorative thing in the house, and if it weren’t for the books colonizing just about every room and the weapons discreetly stashed everywhere, it could be any anonymous, furnished rental. Steve, admittedly, couldn’t really cast stones, here. His own apartment in DC hadn’t been dissimilar. It was probably pretty telling that after SHIELD fell, Steve hadn’t had any qualms about leaving the apartment and everything in it behind. The most personalized space Steve had lived in since coming out of the ice had been his apartment at Stark Tower, which had been decorated with shocking tastefulness and less stupid Captain America memorabilia than expected.

Steve had thought he didn’t mind their house’s bare walls and general lack of personality, and when set against how they had heating and plumbing that (mostly) worked, and how safe Bucky felt here, he mostly didn’t. But their house’s sparseness was starting to get to him. If Bucky had no plans or desire to move anytime soon, Steve wanted to make it feel more like a home.  

“It’s not like our old place was,” tried Bucky uncertainly.

“Good thing it’s not, our old place was only a couple steps up from being a shit hole. We had some of my ma’s stuff though, and your mom gave us curtains.”

It hadn’t been much; Bucky hadn’t paid much mind to aesthetics then either, he’d been too fixated on keeping the place warm enough for Steve. But they’d had the curtains, and some knickknacks, and a collection of quilts and blankets, and taken all together, it had all been almost cozy.

Bucky tilted his head and squinted. “They were an awful shade of puce, weren’t they?”

“I couldn’t tell,” said Steve with a shrug. He’d been red-green colorblind before the serum. He was pretty sure Mrs. Barnes had given them the curtains because she knew Steve couldn’t see their true awful color.

“Oh, right. Silver lining on that colorblind cloud, you not being able to see that particular color.” Steve grinned at the familiarity of the response, then the timer for the pizza dinged, and they both busied themselves getting it out of the oven and setting the table for dinner. Bucky was quiet while they ate, clearly thinking over what Steve had said about the house.

“I like our house,” Steve reassured him, wanting to smooth out that furrow in Bucky’s forehead. “I guess I just want it to feel more like a home.” He hesitated, hoping Bucky wouldn’t take this as a slight. “Don’t you?”

Bucky shrugged and didn’t raise his eyes from his salad. “You’re here. That makes it home.”

The words hit Steve full in the chest, like a bullet made of heat and light that bloomed into fireworks. Before he knew it, he was on Bucky’s side of the kitchen table, kissing him as deep as he could manage in some vain effort to express how Bucky could light up his entire damn world with a few words. Bucky surged up to meet him with equal intensity, and not long after that, they abandoned dinner for the bedroom.

* * *

Later in bed, when they were both drowsy and sated, Bucky asked, “Did you want to, I dunno, decorate the house?”

“Wouldn’t know where to start,” mumbled Steve into Bucky’s bare chest.

“Sam’s a normal 21st century person. We should ask him.”

Steve blew a raspberry on Bucky’s chest, and Bucky laughed. “Is he, though?” asked Steve. “He willingly hangs out with us, and he flies around with a jetpack.”

Steve considered it though. The house next door was now basically Sam’s, since Steve had moved in with Bucky pretty much immediately after Bucky blew his cover. Sam never seemed too concerned with his living space either, not beyond comfort and cleanliness anyway. He didn’t decorate with anything other than photos and throw pillows. Photos though—there was an idea.

“Alright, maybe not Sam,” said Bucky. “There’s furniture stores, I guess. We could go scope them out, see if we get any ideas.”

“We could start with getting some photos printed and framed?”

“Yeah, okay.”

* * *

So Steve had some photos of them, Sam, and Natasha printed and framed, and scattered them around the house. The photo one of the high school kids had taken of him and Bucky at the Winter Formal got pride of place on their bedroom dresser. The photos did a lot to make the house more welcoming, their presence a reassuring reminder that actual people with actual lives lived here. 

He and Bucky made a plan to take a trip to Ikea that weekend too, in the hopes that they’d absorb some idea of how interior design worked. Bucky remained dubious, but maybe he’d succumb to a bit of materialism when faced with all that cheerful Scandinavian minimalism. Steve was just encouraged that their minimal efforts were already getting results in the form of approval from Sam. Sam noticed the photos when he came over that Saturday for one of Bucky’s usual ludicrously abundant weekend breakfasts.

“Hey, you guys got some photos framed!” Sam wandered over to the mantle in the living room to examine them: a couple of Steve and Bucky from date nights they’d had in the past year, the rest of Sam and Nat from one of their ridiculous selfie sprees. Sam laughed when he saw them. “You couldn’t have picked better pictures?”

“Hey, I like those. They really capture your essence,” said Steve.

“There’s a limited supply of bacon and I’m going to eat all of it if you two don’t get to the table!” called out Bucky from the kitchen. Sam promptly abandoned Steve to head to the kitchen.

“Could you guys leave one piece for me for once? Just one?” asked Steve as he followed.

Once the weekly scuffle over breakfast meats concluded, Sam said, “I like what you’ve done with the place,” with a nod to the photos in the living room. “Looks nice. Now all you need are some throw pillows, and you’ll have a real, grownup house.”

Bucky raised a dubious eyebrow. “That’s it? That’s all it takes? Pictures and throw pillows?”

“Yup. Pictures are nice, remind you of your friends and family, and throw pillows mean you have your shit together. Only people who have their shit together bother with pointless decorative pillows.”

Steve opened his mouth to object, because _he’d_ never had throw pillows, and also that seemed like a weird standard, but honestly, it made a weird sort of sense. Bucky, however, was unimpressed.

“We have got to stop using you as a model of normal 21st century behavior.”

* * *

Sam was leaving for his weekend group session at the VA when Steve told him how he and Bucky were going to spend their Saturday.  The immediate wince and grimace on Sam’s face weren’t encouraging signs.

“You’re going to Ikea? I hope your relationship survives that.”

Steve scoffed. “It’s survived the Depression, me being sick all the time, war, death, freezing, thawing, brainwashing, amnesia, Bucky’s terrible mustache, and being undercover. I think it can handle a furniture store.”

“Like I said. I hope your relationship survives that.”

Bucky began to look wide-eyed and alarmed, but Steve just glared at Sam and hustled Bucky to the car before he could interrogate Sam about the dangers of Ikea.

Steve had misgivings the moment they pulled into the crowded Ikea parking lot. The Ikea building was imposingly large and disconcertingly cube-like from the vantage of the parking lot. It was probably supposed to look pleasantly minimalist, but it just looked like a bright blue block of brutalism to Steve, and he wasn’t a fan. The bad first impression wasn’t helped by spotting three couples coming out of the doors with grim expressions, and two more who were still actively arguing. Bucky spotted them too, judging by the eloquent eyebrow he raised in Steve’s direction.

“Look, there are people walking out who are perfectly happy!” said Steve, nodding towards the handful of people hauling giant blue bags or pushing large carts full of boxes towards the parking lots. Happy was pushing it. They looked neutral, at best. Still, Steve didn’t want this mission ruined before it even started, so he walked purposefully into the Ikea, and Bucky strode along amiably enough beside him.

Bucky was mostly fine, most days. But sometimes, he was very abruptly and very quietly _not_ fine, and after spending about ten minutes making headway into the crowded and baffling maze of furniture and interior design that was Ikea, this proved to be one of those times. Steve didn’t draw attention to it, or make a fuss. He knew better by now, he was getting the hang of this taking care of Bucky thing. Instead he just turned them around and walked them right back to the car, keeping an anchoring hand on Bucky the whole time. In the car, he held Bucky’s hand, sweeping his thumb back and forth across his knuckles, until Bucky’s too-fast breathing returned to normal, and he came back from whatever mental space he’d retreated to.

“Too many people?”

Bucky shook his head. “No windows, no exits. And the lights, there’s this—this buzzing they make, and it—”

Bucky didn’t, or couldn’t, say more, but Steve got the picture: an enclosed space, no clear exits, and something that triggered a bad association with HYDRA.

“It’s alright,” said Steve. Bucky just squeezed Steve’s hand, then brought it up to his lips to press a kiss to Steve’s knuckles. “Wanna head back home?”

“No, let’s just try some place smaller.”

The next place they tried didn’t get either of their hackles up, and they wandered around the expansive showroom, putting off the salespeople with smiles and the insistence that they were “just looking, thanks.” The furniture was all displayed attractively enough, in little tableaus that replicated actual rooms, and it all looked nice. But Steve didn’t see anything he especially wanted in their home.

“Maybe a mirror, to go on the living room wall? That…seems to be a popular decorating choice,” tried Steve, looking at what appeared to be a deconstructed sunburst in mirror form. It seemed like it would be a nightmare to actually get up on a wall. 

Bucky frowned. “That’s just gonna make me jumpy, thinking someone else is there every time I see my reflection. What’s the point of a mirror in the living room anyway?”

“Makes it seem bigger, I guess.”

Other popular decorating choices seemed to be large vases and pots filled with curly bare branches or stones, candles in various shapes and sizes, fake plants, art prints, and mass-produced inoffensively abstract paintings. The art prints were the only somewhat tempting option. Steve used to have a few prints up in his old apartment, the one decorating choice he’d made himself. He flipped through the rack of cheaply framed prints: Marilyn Monroe, dogs playing poker, assorted city skyline photos, one of Degas’ dancers...yeah, no. None of the ones here particularly appealed to him.

After a good hour of wandering around, Bucky flopped onto one of the display couches with the vaguely confused, put out frown that Steve would never stop finding adorable.

“It’s all just—stuff.”

“Junk?”

“Nah, it’s too nice to be junk. But it’s _stuff_ , and I don’t see that we need any of it.”

“It’s not about _need_ ,” Steve retorted, hands on his hips.

He suspected this was the sticking point for Bucky though. There was more or less nothing in the house that wasn’t needed, one way or the other. Bucky clearly had no objection to nice things in and of themselves, and he wasn’t a spendthrift. Their bed was very nice, the kitchen was well-equipped, and the furniture they had was well-made. And god knew Bucky spent a lot of money on books. But those were all necessary things, or things that served a purpose.

Bucky rubbed a leaf on the fake plant beside the couch he was sprawled on. “Maybe a plant or two? Real ones.”

_Yes_. This was progress. “Sure! That’d be nice. I was thinking about something for the walls? Art prints, or paintings—”

Now Bucky perked up. “None of the ones here though, right? Because all these paintings are awful.”

“What, that giant LIVE LOVE LAUGH painting over there isn’t speaking to you?” Bucky rolled his eyes and Steve grinned. “Yeah, no, none of these. You wouldn’t mind something up on the walls though?” The walls in the house were mostly bare of anything but a clock or two right now. Maybe Bucky genuinely preferred them that way.

“No, I wouldn’t mind.” Bucky chewed at his lower lip and looked up at Steve. “You could paint something? You did that, right? Paintings?”

Steve blinked, caught off guard. “Yeah, but I haven’t painted in years.” Bucky just tilted his head, brow furrowing.

“Why not? You sketch all the time. We can afford the paint and the supplies now.” Bucky got a set expression on his face and moved to lever himself off the couch. Steve offered him a hand up, and then just kept hold of Bucky’s hand. “That’s what I want. Your paintings on the walls.”

A crowd of excuses and denials spilled into Steve’s mouth: _I don’t know if I can even still paint, I don’t think I really know enough about painting, I haven’t painted since I got the serum, I only ever really painted signs and ads, I don’t think my painting is any good_...but Bucky wanted his paintings. And there was so little he admitted to wanting, even now. Steve would move heaven and earth to make sure Bucky had those few things he genuinely wanted.

Steve pushed all his doubts and denials down, smiled at Bucky, and said, “I can’t promise they’ll be any good. But alright, I’ll give it a shot.” The heartbreakingly bright smile Bucky gave him sealed the deal. Steve would happily paint until his hands cramped to earn that smile.

On their way out of the store, Bucky didn’t let go of Steve’s hand, and Steve tried not to embarrass himself when Bucky leaned in close to murmur, rough and sweet, “Thank you, sweetheart,” into his ear.

Steve was definitely getting a little bit played here, not that it made any difference to the dizzy warmth of the endearment and Bucky’s hand in his. And Steve didn’t mind anyway, just took it as more proof that Bucky really wanted to fill their house with Steve’s paintings. He wouldn’t be bothering to butter Steve up otherwise.

Bucky pulled away at the precise moment Steve’s blush was fading, dropping a rare public kiss to the corner of his mouth on the way. Steve very nearly chased his mouth for a deeper kiss, but managed to summon up enough self control not to. He didn’t want to get them kicked out of a furniture store for indecent behavior.

“So, art supply store next?” asked Bucky.

Steve nodded, vaguely dazed, and followed Bucky to the car. He knew what Sam would say: _he really has you wrapped around his little finger, doesn’t he?_ And yeah, that wasn’t far wrong. Steve was pretty indulgent of Bucky nowadays. He couldn’t help it; he knew all the things Bucky had given up or gone without, quietly and without complaint, for Steve’s sake. He used to whine and gripe volubly and at length about the little things: the date he’d missed because Steve got into some scrap, the meals Steve had ruined with his inattentive cooking, the charcoal and pencil smudges Steve had left on Bucky’s books. But the meals he’d skipped to pay for Steve’s medicines, the dates and new clothes he’d foregone in favor of saving up money to keep Steve in art supplies, the opportunities he’d given up or never pursued to stay with Steve in Brooklyn, the war he’d kept fighting to stay at Steve’s side…those things, Bucky had simply done, without comment or complaint, because in his estimation, there had been no alternative worth considering.

So yeah, Steve indulged Bucky now, gave him every little happiness he could. The world owed Bucky that. Steve owed Bucky that, and more besides.

* * *

Steve didn’t get a chance to start on any painting right away, which was kind of a relief given how intimidating the stack of blank canvases was. The Avengers got called in to help with a standoff situation with a HYDRA base in Argentina, and that took a week to deal with, plus another few days of debriefings with Argentine law enforcement, the anti-HYDRA task forces, and then the FBI and State Department. 

The debriefings were Steve’s least favorite part of being Captain America, but they were a necessary evil, especially now. Without SHIELD to answer to, the Avengers were currently operating on an on-call, as-needed basis with the assorted anti-HYDRA task forces, and every alphabet agency involved maintained careful ignorance of just what Steve, Natasha, and the others were doing when not on an official, sanctioned op. Everyone pretended that whatever Steve was doing on his own was under the aegis of one agency or another, and in return, Steve attended debriefings and did not kick up a news cycle-eating, politician-career-destroying ruckus while he took HYDRA out. 

Bucky had no such limitations. When Steve got back home, Bucky was watching the news, a smug and wicked smirk on his face as an excited news anchor narrated some senator’s perp walk. 

“This your work?” asked Steve, after their customary welcome-home make out had subsided into lazy groping.

“Yup. Asshole took HYDRA money for his campaigns and did every damn thing HYDRA-affiliated lobbyists asked him to do, then tried to cover it all up.”

“I thought you were looking into a lot of politicians for that.” 

“I am. Three of ‘em are cooperating with the FBI about it, so it’s their problem now. I’ve gotten enough intel to a journalist who’s about to go public on a couple of others. And I’ve got some bait out for a couple other big fish too, see if they bite.” Bucky cocked his head and frowned thoughtfully at the TV. “I think I’m getting close to accidentally destroying an entire political party, actually.”

Steve snorted. “Their fault for collaborating with Nazis.” He nuzzled Bucky’s neck, mouthed a wet kiss to his pulse point. “Tell me more.”

“This getting you hot, Rogers? You wanna hear about me digging through FEC filings for HYDRA campaign contributions?”

“Uh huh, it’s very sexy. Tell me more about it while I give you a blowjob.”

Bucky laughed but obligingly lifted his hips so Steve could pull his pants down. “So all the FEC filings are online…” he began in a low and seductive tone. Steve resisted the urge to shiver and gave Bucky a flat look from where he was kneeling, and Bucky laughed again. “What? You said to tell you more.”

“I’m not doin’ my job right if you can think about FEC filings with my mouth this close to your dick.” 

* * *

 

With no missions to go on, and Bucky teaching for half the day, Steve had to face the blank canvases, if only for lack of anything else to do. Bucky wanted Steve’s paintings, so by god, Steve would paint him some paintings. First though, he killed a lot of time setting up his easel and canvas, getting all his supplies and brushes in order. Once he had everything set up in the living room, the blank canvas sitting on the easel loomed, taunting him with its as-yet-unpainted state, and Steve took a break for an early lunch. He could think of something to paint while he ate.

Lunch did not provide much inspiration.

So Steve grabbed his sketchbooks and flipped through them for inspiration: Bucky, Bucky, Sam, Natasha, more Sam, more Natasha, more Bucky, some cityscapes, a few unsuccessful attempts to sketch a plane’s eye view of a mountain range, some silly doodles…none of it seemed like painting material. Steve cast his mind back to his art class assignments. He’d had to do what felt like a lot of still life paintings. That was as good a subject as any to warm up with.

He arranged some fruit on the coffee table in the living room, stuck a glass of water on there too for some verisimilitude, and set about painting. By the time Bucky got home in the afternoon, Steve had a mostly finished and decidedly sloppy still life painting to show for his labors. Bucky beamed when he saw it.

“Hey, you started painting!” He joined Steve in front of the easel, where he threw an arm around Steve’s shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. “It looks great, Steve.”

“No it does not. It looks like I finger painted it. Small children could do better than this.”

“It’s kind of messy,” allowed Bucky. “You just gotta get back in practice. And you could always sign up for an art class, get back in the swing that way.”

“Don’t wanna sign up for a class when I can be called away for a mission any time.”

“Youtube then. You can learn how to do anything from Youtube,” said Bucky, and he had a point.

Just last month, Bucky had fixed their garbage disposal with the help of a Youtube tutorial. Steve had watched anxiously from the kitchen table. _What if it turns on while you have your hand shoved down there? It’s a hole full of spinning knives. Why does every kitchen have a hole full of spinning knives?_ Bucky had just rolled his eyes and wiggled his metal fingers at Steve. _I think my metal hand can handle some spinning knives_.

“Hmm. Maybe,” Steve said.

After a couple more days of lackluster and horribly boring still life paintings, Steve gave up and turned to Youtube. He found many, many videos of a soft-voiced man with a large halo of frizzy hair painting landscapes, and while the landscapes weren’t actually to Steve’s taste—they were pretty but bland, meant to evoke an anodyne sort of serenity—the man’s voice was soothing, and Steve could focus on following his directions without overthinking every brushstroke.

As a bonus, the soporific effects of Bob Ross’s voice meant that on the evenings when Steve painted along with him while Bucky read on the couch, Bucky invariably ended up falling into an untroubled sleep. Bucky could always use more restful sleep in Steve’s opinion, so even though Bucky grumbled about how he’d _wanted to read his book, dammit_ , Steve never woke him, just let him sleep until Steve himself was ready to turn in.

“Hey Buck, c’mon, get up. Let’s get you to bed.”

Bucky blinked blearily up at Steve. “What time izzit?”

“Almost eleven. C’mon buddy, bed time.” He helped Bucky up, and Bucky shuffled along after him to their bedroom.

“Did you paint happy little trees?”

“Uh huh. Lotta happy little trees.”

“Together, right? Inna forest? Can’t be happy little trees if they’re not inna forest,” mumbled Bucky dreamily.

Steve stifled a laugh. Bucky was definitely still half asleep. “Yup, in a forest. You want me to paint you more happy little trees? For the house?”

Bucky hummed thoughtfully. “Maybe.”

They went through their bedtime routine in comfortable, drowsy silence, and when they got in bed, Steve tucked himself against Bucky’s side, hissing when Bucky’s stupid ice cold toes made contact with his shins.

“Elephant,” said Bucky.

Steve blinked. “What’s that, Buck?”

“Want an elephant painting. Trunks’re funny, they’re cute. And they’re smart.”

Steve wanted to giggle, but Bucky sounded so _serious_. “Alright. Elephant, coming right up. What room of the house should we put it in?”

Bucky made a deeply, hilariously indignant noise, his arms tensing around Steve. “Not for the _house_. For my _classroom_.”

Steve honestly wasn’t sure what the train of logic here was, but at this point, Bucky was probably sleep-talking more than anything else, so he just went along with it. He ran a soothing hand down Bucky’s side. “Okay, a nice painting of an elephant for your classroom.”

Bucky sighed happily then, his breathing beginning to slow and deepen. “Love you,” he mumbled, and Steve was desperately, all encompassingly grateful all over again for Bucky’s return.

“Love you too,” Steve whispered back.

* * *

When Steve finally decided he was sufficiently in practice to attempt a painting that would actually be worthy of going up in their house, he started with a painting of the Brooklyn Bridge. He labored over it for a full two weeks, quizzing Bucky all the while about whether he liked it and if it was good enough for them to put up.

“Hmm, I dunno, Steve, I liked the Bob Ross one with the almighty mountain,” teased Bucky.

“Which one with the mountain, all that man paints are mountains and lakes and—”

“Happy little trees!” they chorused together, and laughed. After a couple seconds, Bucky frowned. “I really do want a painting of happy little trees though.”

“I’ll paint you trees next. Seriously though, Buck, is this any good?” Bucky came up behind him, wrapping his arms around Steve’s waist to peer over his shoulder.

“I like it. I like the light, and the shadows. I like the perspective.” Steve had chosen the view of the bridge from the pedestrian walkway down its center. He thought Bucky would like that angle on the precise webbing of the bridge’s cables, and Steve had always found drawing them soothing. “Are you going to add people?” asked Bucky.

Steve had been avoiding it, actually. He didn’t want to think too hard about why. “Do you want me to?”

“I’m not commissioning you here, Steve. Paint what you want.”

“What if I want to fill the house with naked paintings of you?”

“Why would you want naked paintings when you have the real thing, ready and willing to lie around the house naked?”

“Compelling argument. And yet you’re still wearing clothes.” Steve could feel the shape of Bucky’s smile against his neck.

“Point taken. I can change that though,” said Bucky, voice gone dark and promising, and then they forgot about the painting for a while.

Despite the comforting heaviness of Bucky draped half over him, and the warm and even puffs of his breath against Steve’s shoulder, Steve couldn’t settle down that night. Sometime in the small hours, he ended up easing out from under a snuffling Bucky to go back out to the dark living room to contemplate the painting. The ambient light from the streetlights outside was enough for Steve to see the painting perfectly. 

It looked forlorn like this in the dark of the living room, and eerie too: with the bridge empty of pedestrians, the warm late afternoon light he’d bathed the painting in turned it elegiac. He should add people to it. Before he could change his mind, Steve swiftly added a few pedestrians, some of them with the distinctive silhouettes of the fashions of the 40s, some modern, and then went back to bed.

In the morning, Bucky stood in front of the painting while he sipped at his coffee. Bucky’s eyes were sharp, so Steve knew he’d notice the additions, from the slight sheen of the wet paint if nothing else. He wanted to make some excuse or explanation, but he wasn’t entirely sure what he meant to say by mixing up the past and the present in the painting. He thought artists were supposed to know that kind of thing, but Steve didn’t, not really. Not with this, anyway.

“It finished now?” asked Bucky.

“Yeah. Just about.”

Bucky didn’t say anything about the late night additions to the painting. He did come over to where Steve was pointlessly fussing with the coffee machine though, and set his own cup down on the counter. 

“Uh, do you want more coffee, there’s still enough for both of us in the pot—” Steve started, avoiding Bucky’s too-knowing gaze. Bucky brought his hand up to Steve’s cheek, still warm from the mug of coffee, and Steve went silent, met Bucky’s eyes. They were more gray than blue this morning, with the softness of clouds at twilight, the creases at the corners betraying both his joy and his sorrow, even now. He leaned in to kiss Steve, soft and slow, a kiss that made Steve feel like honey was flowing through his veins, like maybe Bucky understood what Steve didn’t about that painting. 

“Put it up in the living room when the paint’s dry,” said Bucky, pulling away with one last coffee-flavored, close-mouthed kiss.

* * *

As promised, Steve’s next painting was of Bucky’s requested happy little trees. He’d been tempted to paint a forest of cartoonish trees with exaggerated happy faces, and had even sketched it out. It was cute, would probably make for a cute animation, like something out of _Fantasia_ , but Steve was maybe more of an art snob than he liked to admit, because he couldn’t bring himself to paint it on an actual canvas that would go up in their home. Instead, he tucked the sketch into Bucky’s bag the next day, where he’d find it when he pulled out his lunch at work. Sure enough, later that day, Steve got a text from Bucky with a picture of the sketch taped up on his classroom’s whiteboard, and a series of heart emojis.

He had time to sketch out a few ideas for a tree-related painting before he had to do actual HYDRA-hunting work—going through reports and tactical scenarios sent over by Natasha and Maria—but even so, by the time Bucky got home in the afternoon, he thought he knew what he wanted to paint for Bucky. It wasn’t quite the happy little trees that Bob Ross fellow liked to paint so much, but Steve thought Bucky would like it. He hoped so, anyway.

“Hey, take a look at this,” said Steve, and showed Bucky the sketch. 

In a rough pencil sketch, it wasn’t much to look at: it was the view looking up into a tree’s branches, as if from the perspective of someone lying below them. The colors would be the thing that would make the painting worthwhile, all green and gold, sunlight through the leaves, maybe a few glimpses of a clear blue sky.

“Like lying under a tree,” said Bucky.

“Yeah, exactly. Maybe not the kind of happy little tree you wanted, but—”

“No, it’s perfect. You should paint it.”

So Steve did.

* * *

“This is familiar,” said Bucky, book on his chest while he watched Steve paint.

“Well, yeah, you’ve been watching me paint for weeks.”

“No—that’s not—” Bucky put his book down and joined Steve at the easel, where he skimmed his fingers along the edges of Steve’s palette, then over the tubes of paint, frowning down at them. “This.”

Steve’s breath caught, and he set his brush down, then handed the palette over to Bucky. The palette was a mess of shades of green and yellow and brown. Seventy years ago, or six, the whole palette would have looked like a mix of muddled browns and brownish yellows to Steve. Now the blobs and smears of paint were vivid, living green hues, like Steve had thrown spring on the palette. The serum had fixed any number of Steve’s ailments, and Steve was grateful for all of it, but the correction of his colorblindness was up there with a heart that worked right.

Bucky hadn’t yet asked _why is this familiar?_ so Steve waited while Bucky looked down at the palette and paints, his brow furrowed and his eyes hazy.

 Bucky murmured, “I used to do this for you sometimes. Mix the colors.”

“Yeah, Buck. With greens especially, since I couldn’t see them right.” 

Colorblind or not, Steve could usually manage on his own: paints were labeled after all, and Steve had known what color things were supposed to be even if he couldn’t see them all correctly. But sometimes he couldn’t get it right, and he’d needed an extra set of eyes, and eventually that morphed into Bucky mixing the paints himself. He’d liked to do it, and he had a good eye for color, so Steve had eventually given in and let him. Gracelessly and grudgingly, it had to be said. Steve didn’t know how Bucky had put up with him.

“You were painting the park once—Prospect Park. As a gift for my ma.”

“That’s right. I wanted to thank her for how much she helped after my ma died.”

“But you had to do the hardest thing. A painting full of green.” Bucky handed the palette back, smiling at Steve with every indication of finding that endearing rather than frustrating. “Don’t need me to mix your paints for you anymore, huh?”

“You could, if you wanted to,” blurted out Steve. There were a lot of other things he wanted to say, and they all started with _do you remember._ But Steve tried to never ask Bucky that. Better to live in the present. If Bucky asked, Steve would tell him. There were so many memories Steve would share with Bucky again, if Bucky asked.

“Nah, I think I’ll leave it to you,” he said with a quick kiss, and then he returned to his book.

* * *

Watching Bucky remember, or try to remember, something from their shared past was one of the most bittersweet gifts of their life together. It was now, anyway. At first, it had only ignited fury in Steve. Not at Bucky, of course, never at Bucky. Only at HYDRA. 

Steve worked hard not to let his anger show: it would have been one thing, if time or illness had led to the loss of Bucky’s memories, as it had with Peggy. But knowing that they hadn’t been lost, that they’d been taken, stolen—that Bucky had suffered so much for their taking, that he’d fought so hard to hold onto them only to have them burned away again and again and again—that made Steve more furious than he could bear. 

But Steve could bear even less the way Bucky drew away from Steve when he saw Steve’s anger. It wasn’t something so obvious as a flinch, or even Bucky drawing away physically. No, it was the palpable way Bucky withdrew into himself, his face going still and distant, and Steve hated to see it, hated even more when he was the cause of it. Instead Steve reserved his anger for blowing up HYDRA bases and destroying every single last one of those nightmare torture device chairs that had taken Bucky’s memories, and when Bucky got that thoughtful furrow on his forehead, Steve just waited to see if Bucky would ask: _do you know? What am I not remembering right now? I don’t remember, can you—?_

That was the unspoken rule: Steve wouldn’t offer, if Bucky didn’t ask.

Often, he didn’t ask. Sometimes it was just about being there as he remembered, a process that often seemed as if Bucky were entering a pitch dark room and feeling his way through it, blind. Bucky knew the shape of what he was remembering, but had to grope around for the details, careful, painfully careful, not to knock into any other memory, or hurt himself falling into painful Winter Soldier memories. Sometimes Steve could be the guiding hand at his elbow, or the hand to hold, directing him through the dim memory with confirmation, or a few more details. Sometimes the light in the room would blink on in one flash of illumination, and Bucky remembered all on his own. And sometimes, Bucky just needed someone to sit in the dark of absence with him.

Those times when Bucky did ask though—those were precious. It didn’t matter if Bucky was asking about something trivial like whether or not he’d gone to see this or that movie with Steve, or something important like when Bucky’s youngest sister was born and whether Bucky had been there. It only mattered that Bucky trusted Steve to have held onto these pieces of him, and that Bucky trusted Steve to give them back to him. Steve sometimes wished the memories were physical things, so that Bucky could see and feel how much they’d been cared for in Steve’s hands, each one like a beloved heirloom that Steve had packed away carefully, kept clean and polished and shining. Steve wanted to be able to press them into Bucky’s hands and say _see? I kept it safe for us. I can keep it safe for us, for however long you need._ Steve wanted to give Bucky all of them.

But then, Bucky didn’t much care about things, did he. Steve could see it now, a metaphorical house full of metaphorical tchotchkes, and Bucky making his scrunched up face of confused disapproval at all of them: _it’s just stuff, Steve_. So Steve held back, both literally and metaphorically, and only gave Bucky what he asked for when it came to both memories and interior design. 

Some days, that was harder than others. With a palette full of green on his arm, there was one memory in particular that Steve wanted to give Bucky again: a tube of oil paint, sap green. 

Even without accounting for amnesia, there was every chance Bucky wouldn’t remember it; it wasn’t anything momentous or extraordinarily notable, not for Bucky anyway. It was just another kindness he’d done for Steve, one of hundreds, if not thousands. There was no reason for Bucky to know what it had meant to Steve. Steve, after all, had never told him.

* * *

_“Hey Steve!”_

_“Hey Buck. You’re home late today. There’s stew in the pot still.”_

_“You are the best roommate. And hey, there’s even some meat in here! Feast of kings, huh? Here, got this for you,” said Bucky, and lobbed something small at Steve. Steve fumbled to catch it, and only just managed it._

_“What’s this?” asked Steve, though he could already see. It was a tube of oil paint._

_“Sap green. Saw you were just about out.”_

_“Buck, you didn’t have to. I still have a ton of yellow and blue, I coulda mixed up more green. Or you could’ve, whichever.”_

_“Yeah, but you’ve been grumbling that it doesn’t come out right. So take it from a man who sees all shades of green: this is the green you need if you’re gonna paint Prospect Park. And the guy at the shop said this kind’s made with walnut oil and no turpentine, so it won’t stink so bad. Oughta be easier on your lungs. And! Leonardo da Vinci himself used paint mixed with walnut oil!”_

_“New paint for me isn’t worth being short on rent.”_

_“Who says we’re gonna be short on rent? Told you, that new clerk job pays pretty well. But now you gotta tell my ma the painting’s a present from both of us.”_

Bucky had gone to wash his hands and face, and then he’d chattered on about his day as he ate his dinner, and all the while, Steve had been burning with the lightning flash realization: _I’m in love with Bucky_. 

It was almost silly, how a tube of green paint had rearranged the landscape of Steve’s heart. Or maybe not rearranged, only put it in a new perspective, turning the steady and enduring love of their friendship and the attraction Steve tried not to dwell on and the thousandth example of Bucky’s easy devotion and care into a greater whole, as if Steve had been unable to see all of it until then. Steve didn’t know how to explain it to Bucky: _you gave me a tube of paint and I realized I was in love with you, but it wasn’t about the paint_. _It was about—it was about you noticing what color I was almost out of, it was about you picking a new brand that wouldn’t leave me wheezing from the solvents, it was about you sparing my stupid pride by making it about the gift for your ma, it was about you trying so hard to see the world through an artist’s eyes, so you could bring me the greens I couldn’t see._ It was about all of that and more besides, and Steve didn’t know how to tell Bucky any of it. 

He settled for putting it all into the painting instead.

* * *

“Steve.”

“So...do you like it?” Bucky just kept staring at the painting with wide, over-bright eyes. Steve swallowed. “I, uh, was thinking of calling it ‘Happy Little Trees’—”  

Bucky let out a choked laugh. “ _Steve._ ”

“Oh no, you hate it. I’m sorry, we can put it in the guest bathroom with the Bob Ross paintings—”

“No. Steve. I— “ Bucky stopped, turned to him. His face was doing something complicated, too much feeling on it for Steve to be able to decode. “Wait,” he said, then took Steve in his arms, pressing his face against Steve’s neck. Steve cradled Bucky’s head with his hand, and tried not to worry. Sometimes it took a while for Bucky to find the right words. Sometimes he just couldn’t find them, and let the silence speak.

“Buck, hey, you okay?”

Bucky nodded against his neck, and breathed against him for a moment. “They kept me in Siberia most of the time. Or—in underground places. Sometimes it felt like—a really long time, since I’d been outside. But once, after—I was waiting for extraction in a forest, and it was spring, I guess. And I looked up at the trees.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Stop apologizing,” said Bucky, squeezing him warningly. “I’m not saying this right. Your painting. It’s like that.”

Steve was about to apologize again, but stopped himself just in time. “Is that good or bad?”

Bucky laughed and lifted his head. He took Steve’s face in his hands. “That’s good, sweetheart. It’s like seeing spring again, after forgetting it. I love it. I love you.”

Steve sagged with relief, and sank into kissing Bucky.

* * *

 

One week later:

“Uh, an elephant? Is this a Bob Ross thing?”

“No, you said you wanted a painting of an elephant.”

“What? No I didn’t.”

“Yes you did.”

“…when?”

“Oh, a couple months ago now. You were maybe kinda mostly asleep. But you were really insistent. You wanted an elephant painting for your classroom.”

“…why?”

“I dunno, Buck. You said their trunks are funny and they’re cute and smart. So I said I’d paint you one.”

“Huh. Well, thanks, I guess….dammit, that is a really cute elephant.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's not an Ikea in Cleveland in our universe. There is in this one, roll with it. Also, I _started_ researching 1930s oil paint brands and whether any of them used walnut oil but then I thought "lol get a hold of yourself, it's fic and you're PROCRASTINATING." this whole thing is me procrastinating from working on yuletide fic.


	10. the way to turn each other on again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _So Wilson hadn’t recognized him, good job, what a great disguise, Barnes. But Steve would. No amount of terrible facial hair and unfortunate faux-corrective eyewear would disguise him from Steve. Steve, who had taken one look at a cyborg assassin with long hair swiping a knife at his face and said, “Bucky?” like of course this guy was his dead best friend, what a logical first conclusion._
> 
> _Bucky was pretty sure he wasn’t ready for this._
> 
> Bucky's POV of they're gonna send us to prison for jerks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content note: heads up for standard Winter Soldier trauma business. Nothing's described in detail, but Bucky has a couple flashbacks and vague thoughts/memories of self-harm.
> 
> Chapter title from The National's "Guest Room."

Bucky spotted the guy walking in and out of the house next door to his from all the way down the block. The house next door had been empty for a couple weeks, so it was probably just the new tenant. Even so, Bucky shifted his grip on the briefcase and problem sets he was holding, and checked on the knife sheathed at his back. The calculation of his escape route was automatic: at a flat out sprint, he could be back in his car in thirty seconds or less, and if he threw the briefcase and papers at the man, he’d have enough time to get away without any violence…. 

A quick visual assessment of the man didn’t help Bucky decide whether to make a run for it or not: black, an inch or so shorter than Bucky but fit, no obvious weapons, late 20s to mid 30s, nothing in his hands but his keys, which could certainly be a weapon, but the car in the driveway with an open trunk meant he was either just loading or unloading something, or there could be a weapon in there…the steady background hum of risk calculation and threat assessment rose and fell in Bucky’s head.

When Bucky got close enough to get a good look at the man’s face, he really did want to make a run for it, but too late, he was in front of his house already and he’d been spotted. A whole new set of ways out of this situation began running through his head, none of them particularly appealing.

“Hey, Jack, right? I’m Sam Wilson, your new neighbor.” He gave Bucky a friendly, gap-toothed smile.

What the fuck. 

“Yeah, hi. Jack Murphy,” replied Bucky, his mouth racing ahead of his brain. 

Sam Wilson. The same Sam Wilson who was the Falcon, the Sam Wilson whose cool metal wings he’d torn off and who he had kicked off a damn helicarrier. The Sam Wilson who had spent the better part of the last two years helping Captain Goddamn America look for Bucky Barnes. That Sam Wilson. Who was either fucking with him, or maybe keeping up a cover, or actually didn’t recognize him as Bucky Barnes or the Winter Soldier right now. Which, yeah, was the whole point of this stupid disguise, but really? 

Bucky scrutinized Wilson for any tells, but there were none. Wilson’s hands and shoulders were relaxed, his expression was nothing but open and friendly. There wasn’t a single hint of recognition on his face or in his body language. Was he keeping up a cover? Unlikely, he was still using his real name. Were they being surveilled? 

“Jess said you were our other neighbor when we met her earlier today. She was not kidding about the parking on this street, huh? How far away did you have to park?”

“Down the block. My garage is full, so…” Shit, he’d said _we._ Was Steve here too? “You just move in?” 

“Yeah, just today! Me and my friend Steve, hang on, let me get him out here—Steve, come out here and meet Neighbor Jack!”

_Fuck fuck fuck fuck_. Adrenaline flooded through him, one cold wash from the crown of his head on down, turning everything sharp and precise. He could hear Steve’s footfalls inside the house, and he could hear Wilson’s breathing, even and untroubled.

Bucky contemplated making a run for it. So Wilson hadn’t recognized him, good job, what a great disguise, Barnes. But Steve would. No amount of terrible facial hair and unfortunate faux-corrective eyewear would disguise him from Steve. Steve, who had taken one look at a cyborg assassin with long hair swiping a knife at his face and said, “Bucky?” like of course this guy was his dead best friend, what a logical first conclusion.

Bucky was pretty sure he wasn’t ready for this.

One look at Steve, and Bucky _knew_ he wasn’t ready for this. Too many competing memories rushed in: a Steve he expected to be smaller, a clean-shaven Steve in Army fatigues, Steve battered and bloody and falling away from him, Steve pale and horrified and Bucky falling away from him. He blinked hard and fast a few times before seeing Steve as he was now: bearded, and with unhappy lines of tension around his eyes and on his forehead.

“Hey Steve, this is Jack Murphy, our other neighbor. Jack, this is Steve.”

And goddammit, Bucky could _tell_ when Steve recognized him. The way his eyes widened in shock and confusion, the way his mouth dropped open—that was just the same as it had been during that fucking fight on the bridge. Only this time, Steve didn’t say his name. Instead, Steve gave an unruffled Wilson a baffled, somewhat wild look, then looked at Bucky’s left arm. Which would, to Steve and Wilson, look like unremarkable flesh and blood. The nano mesh did its job well, though one squeeze of his arm would very quickly reveal it wasn’t muscle and bone under there. 

Just when the silence was about to stretch a beat too long, some of Bucky’s problem sets slipped from his hand, and Bucky took the opportunity to occupy his left arm with the briefcase and papers. He offered Steve his right to shake.

“Hi, nice to meet you,” said Bucky.

Nothing happened when they touched. Steve’s hand was warm, his handshake unremarkably firm. Bucky’s skin, for once, didn’t rebel against the touch. Before he could think too hard about that, the handshake was over, and Wilson was talking again.

They all exchanged rote pleasantries and small talk, and Bucky watched Steve closely for any tell, any sign. Steve had recognized him, Bucky was sure of it, so why the fuck wasn’t he saying anything? Keeping up a cover or not, surely he could give Bucky _some_ hint. If this was payback for Bucky’s own lack of recognition back in DC, Bucky wanted to goddamn punch Steve. _I have amnesia, asshole, what’s your excuse?_  

Steve had fallen silent while he and Wilson talked about pointless, banal shit, and unless there was some hidden code in Wilson’s chatter about lawns and sidewalks, this whole conversation was exactly what it seemed like: new neighbors making small talk. Maybe Steve had amnesia too, thought Bucky, hysteria bubbling up in his chest, and carefully didn’t look too much at Steve. He looked good with a beard. Less like Captain America.

So okay, maybe Wilson was the best damn actor outside of a movie theater, but Steve wasn’t. Maybe he could get a hint, a tell, _something_ out of Steve.

“It was Steve, right? I didn’t catch your last name,” asked Bucky after Steve had been quiet too long.

Steve visibly refocused on the conversation. “Uh, Grant. Stephen Grant.”

Oh great, his actual first name and his middle name. Super helpful. Real great cover there, Rogers. This wasn’t helping Bucky figure out what the fuck was going on. He narrowed his eyes at Steve and tried not to grip his briefcase hard enough to break it.

“You seem familiar,” he tried. The subtext there was pretty clear, right? _I know you_ , he thought, and  then tried very hard not to think about the last time he’d told someone he knew Steve, and just how very badly that had gone. 

Too late. The phantom taste of rubber filled his mouth. He felt like fucking throwing up.

Wilson laughed, blissfully unaware of how Bucky was about to have a small breakdown. “Yeah, he gets that a lot.” 

Bucky waited, in case someone was finally going to put him out of his misery and say _Captain America, right?_ with a broad wink or significant eyebrow waggle.

But no, instead Steve tried a weak, “That guy, on the—hockey team. You know.”

_No I fucking do not, Steven, and I bet you don’t either!_ Bucky wanted to yell. Instead he pressed his lips together tight and then tried, again, to fish for some hint of what the fuck was going on. Or at least to goad Steve into breaking his terrible cover. “Yeah, yeah, that’s it. What was his name again?”

Steve got that called-on-in-class-and-don’t-know-the-answer look on his face, which Bucky was intimately familiar with. Wilson rescued Steve from his own idiocy, and offered up a name, before finally bringing this whole excruciating charade to a close.

“Well, we’ll let you get to your grading,” said Wilson.

Okay, fine, whatever. Bucky gave them one last opening. Maybe they could leave him a damn message on his car.

“Always wonder why I give ‘em all that homework when I’m stuck grading it. It was nice talking to y’all, let me know if you ever need me to move my car or anything, I’ve got the blue Corolla. We gotta squeeze in pretty tight on this street. And heads up: the cops really will give you a ticket for blocking the sidewalk if you park in the driveway.”

* * *

When he got inside his own house, Bucky did, in fact, throw up, which was not ideal. _I needed those calories_ , he thought morosely as he flushed the disgusting remains of his lunch down the toilet, and resigned himself to a couple extra pre-dinner protein bars. 

Supposing, of course, that he’d be having dinner at all and wouldn’t be on the goddamn run again.

He wanted to take a few minutes to let the shivers from the cold sweat on the back of his neck die down, but he couldn’t afford the time or the tremor in his limbs. So he opted to ignore it, and grabbed his go-bag from its hiding spot, strapped on some guns, and went to the garage to check all his alerts and security feeds. 

None of his security feeds or traps had been tripped. There was no indication that anything out of the norm was happening in Cleveland, and there hadn’t been any chatter from HYDRA about the Winter Soldier for nearly a year now. The law enforcement radio feeds Bucky hacked into were all business as usual, and the anti-HYDRA task forces in the area were working on the same things they’d been working on all month. As far as Bucky knew, as of last week, Steve and Wilson had been busy following HYDRA leads thrown their way by Romanoff and/or the non-HYDRA remnants of SHIELD.

So why were they here? Why were they _right next door_?

There was that base in the old mine not too far from Cleveland, maybe that was it. Bucky had tentative plans to blow the whole thing, once he was sure there wasn’t anything worth grabbing in there, and that he wouldn’t be poisoning the area if he did blow it all up. If Steve and Wilson were here for that base, Bucky wouldn’t say no to letting them deal with it after he’d done his own recon; they probably had better resources for handling the mess. But if they were here for that, why set up shop in Cleveland? Bucky knew how Steve hit HYDRA bases, relied on it, in fact, when he drew Steve’s attention to where it ought to be, instead of on Bucky. Steve, Wilson, and Romanoff went in fast and hit hard, and didn’t linger. They’d have set up camp and recon by the base, blown it, and left. So it probably wasn’t that.

There were a handful of HYDRA stragglers in Ohio too, and some cells that the FBI field offices here were investigating. It was nothing that warranted the Avengers’ attention though, and Bucky was leaving the FBI to it, since they seemed to have it well in hand.  

That left Karpov, but he was dead, so if they were here for him, they’d find out soon enough that they were too late. And if they were here for Bucky...well, why the fuck didn’t they say anything when they found him?

Alright, Wilson didn’t recognize him, that was fine. That was this terrible caterpillar of a mustache and the uncanny nano mesh over his arm doing their jobs, and it wasn’t like Wilson knew Bucky. But Steve. Steve knew him. Steve was always sure of him. Steve had been idiotically, suicidally sure of him, when there had been nothing but a mess of screaming and violent confusion in Bucky’s head, when there had barely been any _Bucky_ to be sure of, when Bucky had shot him and beaten him, and fuck, he was going to be sick again.

Why wasn’t Steve sure now? 

The question wouldn’t leave Bucky alone. He spent the better part of the night waiting for something terrible to happen, and he couldn’t even convince himself it was irrational anxiety. Expecting a SWAT team to come bursting in, or a HYDRA cell to attack, or Steve to come knocking on his door demanding answers all felt like equally likely possibilities, so Bucky stayed up all night, guns and go-bag in reach.

He should run. If he had any sense, he’d run. But his fourth period pre-calc class had a test tomorrow. He was supposed to go over Jenny H.’s and Scott’s last calculus tests with them at lunch on Thursday, walking them through the problems they’d gotten wrong. He had his support meet-up on Saturday, and the Math Olympiad meeting next week. Abandoning all of that—Bucky could do it. Bucky knew just how many things he could do, if he had to. He knew exactly how much misery he could bear, probably hadn’t even found the limit of it yet, given that he was still breathing.

But he didn’t want to do it. He didn’t want to abandon this life. _Let them drag me from it kicking and screaming, let them make me fight._ He wouldn’t run.

As for Steve—Bucky didn’t know what the fuck he was going to do about Steve.

* * *

Steve didn’t know what the fuck to do about him either, apparently.

“Good morning…Jack!” said Steve while he stretched on his scrap of a lawn a couple mornings after the beginning of this whole farce. His running clothes were obscenely tight. Bucky could see his nipples. Didn’t that _chafe_? Did Steve still think he was five foot nothing?

“Morning, neighbor,” said Bucky, because he might as well fully commit to this whole Flanders thing he had going. (Simpsons, so great for rapid pop culture catch up.)

He waited a few seconds in case Steve had anything else to say, but no. Steve just got a pinched look on his face, then busied himself with a lunge. His pants, it turned out, were just as tight as his shirt, at least in the ass area. 

_Alright then_ , thought Bucky. _If that’s how we’re going to play this_.

The exchange repeated the next morning, with slight variation when Bucky decided to comment on the weather hoping for…he didn’t even know what. 

“Gorgeous weather, huh? It’s so _nice_ that _winter is over_.” Fuck, that was too obvious, what was he doing.

Apparently it wasn’t too obvious for Steve, because he just nodded and said, “Good day for a run! Have a nice day!”

So their emotional best friend reunion was going great.

After a few days of such illuminating conversations, plus not being surrounded by a SWAT team or attacked by HYDRA or captured by some alphabet agency, Bucky figured he was clear of any immediate threats. Apart from Steve himself anyway, and Steve wasn’t a threat. Bucky _knew_ Steve wasn’t a threat, no matter what the constant threat evaluation subroutine in his head said. That was the Winter Soldier talking and Bucky did not need to be the Winter Soldier with Steve. He didn’t. He didn’t need to know that Steve was unarmed on his morning runs. He didn’t need to always know the exact number of seconds it would take Steve to be within striking distance. He didn’t need to know what it would take to evade pursuit from Steve—how fast he would have to run, how much force it would take to incapacitate him. He _didn’t._ Because Steve wasn’t a threat.

Not when all Steve did was stare at him while he stretched for his morning run and Bucky left for work. Maybe he was trying to communicate something with that stare. Maybe the old Bucky would have gotten it.

Well, current Bucky _didn’t_ get it, and current Bucky just wanted Steve to use his words or leave, because current Bucky wasn’t ready for this. A few notebooks full of memories about Steve hadn’t prepared Bucky for the reality of him. And maybe the cover identity that was Jack Murphy looked like he had his life together, deeply unfortunate fashion choices aside, but Bucky had been more or less immediately sick at just the thought of what had happened the last time he’d admitted to knowing Steve.

That was part of how the goddamned conditioning worked, he knew. Knowing didn’t help much. He’d wanted to go to Steve when he was _free_ of all this bullshit.

But he wasn’t free of it, he was still a goddamn mess. So goddamn what if shaking Steve’s hand hadn’t made his skin crawl. _Not safe not safe not safe_ blared that part of him that always ran the risk calculations, at cacophonous odds with the rest of him. He could scream logic at it all he wanted: _he’s your friend, he even told you so back when you were literally trying to murder him_. It didn’t make a difference. As long as Steve didn’t just fucking _tell_ him why he wasn’t acknowledging Bucky, as long as Bucky had no idea what the hell was going on, he couldn’t make the equations balance, couldn’t find a value for _x_ that would outweigh that _not safe_. So when Steve said _good morning_ and _have a nice day_ and stared at Bucky’s left arm, Bucky answered with matching bland courtesy, and made sure he wore the wrist brace that concealed any obvious discrepancies between his two arms.

He wondered, though. What would happen if he told Steve, _it’s me_. A fight, maybe. He’d deserve it. But what he wanted—he didn’t even know what he wanted.

* * *

At night, after he caught up on his grading and reviewed his lesson plans, after he checked, again, that Steve and Wilson weren’t being surveilled by anyone but him, after he dug through the SHIELD files for intel on the base in the old mine—after all that, he pulled out his notebooks.

There were a dozen of them. He didn’t know if that counted as too much or too little to cover his thirty-something years of (unfrozen) existence. He set aside the notebooks that were full of Winter Soldier memories, and he shuffled the ones full of the war to the bottom of the stack. He was looking for answers about Steve right now, not Captain America.

At first, all he’d been able to remember of Steve had been that last moment: the train, Steve’s horrified face, his hand outstretched. There had been some comfort in that, even when the memory was severed from any other context. Someone had reached for him, once. The feeling had seeped in slowly from there: the fear of the fall and of death, and the desperate, wild denial— _I don’t want to leave him_. 

If he’d had any hopes of the rest of his past unwinding from that moment, one easy to follow thread from end to start, they were dashed before he could even fully form the hope. Memories came in no particular order, stripped of context, sometimes more feeling than fact, and then other times more fact than feeling. He’d had to write it all down just to make any sense of it. And when he’d put it all together—

_“You got better things to do with your time than nursemaid me.” Steve’s voice is raspy and weak still from this latest bout of pneumonia. He coughs again, terrible and deep. Bucky’s own chest goes tight and breathless. “You got better things to do with your_ **_life_ ** _than stay with me,” says Steve, once he’s caught his breath again, the words heavy with bitterness. “Go, go out, I’ll be fine.”_

_Bucky hasn’t moved from this chair at Steve’s bedside for the better part of the day. He leans forward onto the bed, shakes his head: no._

_“Yes I will! I’m on the mend, Buck, I swear, I’ll stay in bed—”_

_“No, I mean—” Bucky should joke, should give Steve shit, should say something that will make Steve roll his eyes and shove at him, but it had been too close, this time. He’s too tired and too scared still to even try finding any pretense. “I don’t have better things to do with my life than stay with you.”_

_Even though he’s just clawed himself back from the brink of death, Steve stirs as if he’s going to put up a fight about it, and Bucky’s chest goes tighter still. It feels like something in him wants to break or burst, and if it does, he won’t be able to gather it back in again. He bows his head, covers his mouth with his clasped hands._

_“Buck,” says Steve, and puts a gentle, cold hand on the back of Bucky’s neck._

_“I’m staying,” Bucky manages to croak out._    

Bucky had read enough about memory by now, the neuroscience of it and the way it worked, to know that a memory could change in the remembering of it. Memories weren’t fixed things, weren’t dispassionate recordings of events. They were weighted with emotion and bias, and the brain filled in details that might or might not be accurate. When he was feeling particularly self-pitying, he couldn’t help but think of remembering as the opposite of dismembering. Putting together something that had been taken apart. He couldn’t know what pieces he’d lost along the way, or if the whole looked anything like it originally had.

He couldn’t know: had past-Bucky meant he wanted to stay forever? Had past-Bucky understood what that tightness in his chest had meant? Had he looked at Steve’s crooked smile and wanted to kiss it then, or was that the too-late, missed chance desire of the present? Was it only now, after so long alone, that he wanted to wrap himself around Steve for more reasons than sharing warmth? 

Bucky didn’t know. He knew he’d shared a life with Steve, from childhood through the war. He knew he’d loved Steve. He didn’t know if either of them had known that, then. There was still so fucking much he didn’t know. There was so much that wasn’t in these paltry notebooks. 

But Steve knew. Steve was right here, in the present. A real live person who had pieces of Bucky that Bucky himself no longer had. Bucky didn’t know, couldn’t know, what was and wasn’t new in what he felt for Steve. But Steve would. Steve would know if the too-huge, too big to look at once, too goddamn much that was Bucky’s feelings for Steve was right or not. Steve would know what should be written between the lines and in the blank spaces of his notebooks.

Bucky didn’t think he was ready for that.

* * *

Whatever answers Steve was hoping to get by staring at Bucky in the mornings, he apparently wasn’t getting them, because he escalated to staring at Bucky through his windows, or trying to at any rate. 

_What the fuck, Steve,_ thought Bucky when he heard Steve’s tread along the path by their houses’ shared fence. He ruthlessly ignored the part of him that was telling him to go eliminate this threat with extreme prejudice. _No_ , he told himself. _It’s just Steve. It’s just Steve being an idiot, it’s not an intruder, it’s not anyone coming to take you._ He breathed in and out, slowly, stayed focused on the data on his screen. 

What was Steve even hoping to find out this way? There weren’t any sight lines to the house’s interior on that side, Bucky had made sure of that. Steve wouldn’t be able to see anything, and the most interesting thing he’d be able to hear, even with serum-enhanced hearing, was Bucky typing on his laptop. Lurking like a peeping Tom was not the best way to gather intelligence. Steve was a terrible spy.

Bucky was not. Bucky had broken into Steve and Wilson’s house yesterday to get an idea of what the hell they were doing here, and had found a) no evidence that they knew just who their neighbor was, and b) plenty of evidence that they were here to figure out what had happened to Karpov. _Bucky_ had happened to Karpov, but there sure as hell wasn’t any evidence proving that. That still didn’t explain why Steve was acting the way he was though. Maybe there was a deeper mission at play. Should Bucky really risk potentially blowing it and burning all their covers? Even if Steve and Wilson’s covers were shitty to nonexistent? 

Steve had to make the first move here, Bucky decided. That was safest, for all of them. 

_But what if Steve never made the first move?_ What if Steve prodded and poked around Jack Murphy’s life and concluded, _nope, not Bucky_? _Then you let him go_ , Bucky told himself. He could live with missing Steve, after all. Bucky knew the exact limits and dimensions of the pain he could and couldn’t live with, he knew what he could and couldn’t survive. He could live with missing Steve, he told himself, and ignored the way the thought made his chest feel panic-attack tight. 

* * *

Steve’s next terrible spying effort was tailing Bucky. Following on foot while Bucky was driving in a car was an admittedly clever choice of tailing method, one only a super soldier could probably pull off, but Bucky still spotted Steve easily enough. He could lose Steve easily enough too: there were six alternate routes to the school that would take the same amount of time, another 32 that would take longer. He could double back home, grab his notebooks and wipe the computers, and bug out by the time the first period bell rang. He could ditch the car and go on foot, he could ditch the car and hot wire a new one, he could drive to the storage unit where he kept his motorcycle—he could lose Steve before Steve even fully knew what had happened. He’d done it before.

_It’s just Steve. You’re not running. You’re not._

He kept driving on his usual route to the high school. Like usual, he got there the same time Janet from the classroom down the hall did, and they walked into the building together. He could feel Steve’s eyes on him the entire time. It should have been a familiar sensation, but it felt different, from a distance. It pricked the animal instinct in him to run, to hide. He resisted it. _It’s just Steve. You’ve lived practically your whole life with his eyes on you_. He hoped Steve wouldn’t be stupid enough to try actually following him onto the campus. Administration took a real dim view of strangers lurking around. 

When Bucky got to his classroom, he took a quick glance out of the dirty window, and listened carefully for a moment. Nothing greeted him but the cheerful shake of leaves in the tree outside, and all he could hear was the normal clamor of kids headed to their classes. He couldn’t quite decide if he was disappointed or relieved.

* * *

Over a week passed with no overtures beyond the neighborly from Steve or Wilson, and Steve seemed to reach an impasse in his stalking efforts. It made Bucky antsy, made him want to turn the tables and stalk Steve right back. _Counter-surveillance, threat assessment—no._ Bucky had a damn job to do, and when he wasn’t doing that, he had a HYDRA base to research. Steve would make a move, or he wouldn’t. In the meantime, Bucky could at least keep a little bit of an eye on what Steve and Wilson were up to, if only by making sure they’d have to ask Bucky to move his car before they went anywhere.

If Bucky found Wilson’s annoyed twitch and grimacing smile every time he saw how close Bucky parked to his car _hilarious_ , well, no one had to know. 

When another weekend rolled around without any disaster striking, Bucky grabbed a book and his sunglasses, and parked himself on his tiny lawn. It was a balmy sunny day, and the sunshine was worth the way the stubbly grass itched, even through a towel. If Steve or Wilson came out, so much the better. Bucky could play nosy neighbor and ask them what they were up to this fine Saturday, and watch them squirm and lie their way through a probably half-assed cover story.

Bucky kept half his attention on the unremarkable white noise of the weekend-morning street, and the rest on his book, and carefully didn’t react when he heard the door to the house next door open, followed by Steve’s tread. Judging by the silence, Steve was staring at him again. He knew he didn’t look all that much like the Bucky Barnes that lived in Steve’s memories right now, but seriously? Did his new look require _this much_ staring. Bucky turned a page of his book with a forceful snap of paper. _He_ had been half-dead and hallucinating and he’d _still_ recognized Steve even after he’d about doubled in size. What was a mustache compared to all that? 

The silent staring finally stretched on way past the point of politeness, so Bucky lowered his book to look at Steve. Steve’s eyes jerked away from the general region of Bucky’s thighs. _What the fuck?_

“Morning, neighbor,” he said.

Steve grinned nervously. “Hi. Uh, trying for a tan?”

“Not really. Just getting some sun. Vitamin D and all, it’s good for you. You running even on the weekend?”

“No, no, just going to get some coffee.” An idea visibly dawned in Steve’s eyes. “Uh, I can get you some, if you want?”

_Aww, Steve_. That was sweet. Bucky was still annoyed about all the damn staring though.

“That’s mighty neighborly of you, thanks. Can you get me a venti soy five shot caramel frappucino with extra caramel and no whip?”

Dump a bunch of protein powder in that and it wasn’t far off from what Bucky had lived off of for a couple months before his thawed-out guts had settled. Also, totally coincidentally of course, it was one of the most expensive damn drinks you could concoct at a Starbucks.

“What,” said Steve.

Bucky fought off a smile. “Did you need me to write it down for you?”

“No, I’ve got it! Be back soon!” said Steve with a strained grin.

One chapter later, Steve returned, and set Bucky’s extremely over-priced but delicious drink down beside him. Bucky grinned up at him, and Steve flushed, just a little bit. Steve lifted his own drink from the drink carrier and took a drink.

“So what’re you reading?” asked Steve.

Bucky resisted the urge to be a dick and tap at the clearly visible title. Instead he said, “A book about Euler’s identity. You know, e to the pi i plus one equals zero?”

Steve nodded, which was total bullshit. Steve didn’t know shit about Euler. Bucky didn’t know how he knew this, but he knew it. He took a drink of his frappucino before he could say anything ill-advised.

“Sounds interesting!” lied Steve. Bucky’s earlier annoyance faded as quickly as it had appeared. Steve, bless him, was trying _so hard_ to not make some smart ass comment. Too bad. Bucky loved Steve’s smart ass comments.

“It’s my favorite equation.” 

He wasn’t even lying, it was. It was elegant and simple, one of the most beautiful equations in all of mathematics, encompassing so many different mathematical concepts and constants, and…yeah, okay, Bucky was aware no one cared. No one outside his mathletes anyway.

Steve shifted awkwardly from foot to foot, and a muscle in his jaw twitched, the only sign of the smart ass comment Steve undoubtedly wanted to make fighting for its bid for freedom. Bucky took pity on him and kept the conversation going. “What do you like to read?”

“Biographies, history. Military history, mostly.”

The shadow of a memory fell across Bucky’s mind, then was gone. Steve’s hands on the spine of a book… “Sounds boring.”

“You’re reading a book about a math equation. It’s somehow hundreds of pages long.” 

Steve had that raincloud look of annoyance on his face now, and the stubborn, fight-me set to his jaw. Unbidden, affection swelled in Bucky like a gale of laughter he badly wanted to let out. His body remembered what his mind struggled to; had they been standing together, Bucky would have thrown an arm around Steve’s shoulders and ruffled his hair. The desire to do just that—and more, maybe—zinged through his muscles with an almost physical force. Instead of letting any of that out, he just gave Steve his best teacher look from over his sunglasses.

Wilson saved both of them from any more awkwardness when he yelled for his caffeine.

“Don’t withhold the man’s caffeine from him, Steve, that’s cruel and unusual punishment,” Bucky said, and hid his face behind his book. His heart was pounding hard and fast, and not in the way that heralded an oncoming panic attack.

_Steve Steve Steve,_ said his heart, and missed him, though he was only yards away.

* * *

Bucky stayed outside for another half an hour, sipping on his too-sweet drink and failing to absorb anything his book had to say about Euler. His head was too full of Steve.

Eventually he gave up on his book and went inside. He had a couple hours to kill before his support meet up, and he spent it going through what intel he’d already collected on the HYDRA base in the old mine, and poking at his Strucker files. That and contemplating how many explosives he’d need to blow the whole mine kept him occupied enough to avoid obsessing over Steve, or over the damned meet up. 

Most of the time, Bucky thought going to the stupid more-or-less-weekly PTSD support group meet up was pointless. He almost never said anything. He’d been going for nearly a year, and he could count the times he’d said something personal about himself on one hand. He only went out of the vague certainty that he needed some normal-people standard against which to measure all his trauma bullshit. 

Seeking out an actual professional was out of the question. Even if he _could_ talk about any of his shit, what would he say to some normal, civilian doctor? They’d toss him in prison, or the asylum. The VA was out too; too much likelihood of being asked _what war, what unit, what base—_ and Bucky couldn’t answer any of that.

So instead he went to an ad-hoc, mostly civilian, internet-organized support group of the variously traumatized. It was better than nothing, probably. And they’d helped, the couple times Bucky had managed to choke some words out. _I don’t think I can stand people touching me any more_ , he’d said once, after a week’s worth of friendly shoulder pats and handshakes and a couple enthusiastic teenage hugs and general day-to-day jostling at work had, come Friday, left him shaking and feeling like he’d happily crawl out of his own skin if he could. 

_Do you want people to touch you? It’s okay if you don’t_ , Emma had said. And Bucky had answered, _I want to be okay with people touching me_ , and they’d all talked about it for a few minutes, a couple other people saying they were in the same boat as him. _You know what I did?_ Rahim had said. _I just got on standing room only buses, places with packed crowds, places you can’t help but touch people and have ‘em touch you, where it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just people, just bodies. No one wants to hurt you, you’re all just mushed up against each other. I dunno, it helped._ Bucky had ended up trying it, and Rahim had been right. It’d helped. Commingling with the indifferent masses provided an overlay of meaningless, inconsequential touches that soothed over some of his body’s memories of violence. 

And it helped, too, to know his level of fucked up wasn’t so unique as all that. So he kept going.

He didn’t know what he’d do if Steve chose a support meet up day to tail him though. This wasn’t a thing he wanted Steve to know. He wouldn’t have to worry about it yet, anyway. Bucky remained un-stalked today, and the familiar faces and the slightly musty smell of the church rec room loosened up tension Bucky hadn’t noticed he was carrying. He poured himself a cup of coffee from the snack table, and settled into his habitual corner seat with the best sight lines. 

“Alright, Jack?” asked Paul, the way he did every week, face wrinkled with a kind smile. Bucky smiled back and nodded. Paul never seemed to mind Bucky’s silence.

This week, as in most weeks, Bucky couldn’t quite bring himself to say anything, not about himself anyway. Nothing about his current situation was sane or explicable. But he could listen to everyone else, and make the occasional encouraging or commiserating comment, and it was almost enough to settle him. 

After the meet up, he went for a long, long run, chasing that moment where he was a thing the world moved through, rather than a thing moving through the world: that moment of perfect silence in his head where there was nothing but his body and the air going through it and the ground meeting the slap of his feet and the thousand details of the world streaming through his senses.

During a support meet up once, Annie had said, _I know most of us would undo what happened to us if we could. And I’m not—this isn’t some ‘everything happens for a reason’ bullshit, because fuck that. But—is there anything any of you would keep, from_ _all the bad stuff? Anything you wouldn’t have without it, that you’d want to hold onto?_

Bucky thought about that a lot. 

At first, reflexively, he’d thought there was nothing of the Winter Soldier he wanted. In the bad first months after Insight, he’d thought wildly, longingly, of getting back in the chair, of turning it on and letting the burning storm take it, take all of it. But too much of it was too useful, and anyway, that would have probably turned him into a drooling vegetable. 

Now Bucky knew: nothing could ever be fully erased. Nothing could be undone. _Want_ didn’t even come into what he would or wouldn’t keep of the Winter Soldier. If Bucky couldn’t undo the violence his hands had done, then he couldn’t give up the violence that lived in his body, and he couldn’t give up the arm, or the knowledge of weapons and tradecraft and threat assessment. That was all his, and it was all _useful_ , Bucky could make it useful, could turn it towards something like justice, even without fighting. But the perfect, no-mind silence, the patient blankness that came sometimes in the moment before he fully froze, or in the tenth hour waiting for the perfect shot, or on a days-long hump through the taiga to an extraction point—the best and only peace he’d found—that, Bucky _wanted_ to hold onto, just for himself.

Today, that fragile peace came around mile twenty and carried him through another ten miles after that. When he got home, the baby calf trembling of his legs told him he’d pushed himself too far. 

It didn’t matter. He slept without dreaming.

* * *

To Bucky’s mingled delight and dismay, Steve began making an obvious effort to be friendly. Bucky wasn’t exactly in practice when it came to making friends, but even so, Steve’s efforts came across as awkward. Steve wavered between stilted efforts to be blandly nice, and his natural, true essence of being a little shit. The contrast was faintly hilarious. And maybe made Bucky want to goad Steve into breaking cover some more, or at least goad him into being the jerk with twenty pounds of attitude in a five-pound bag that Bucky pretty clearly remembered him being.

Results were mixed.

Parking like an asshole really only served to infuriate Wilson, which was definitely worth it, but Steve didn’t seem to care one way or another. Wearing terrible clothes was honestly hurting Bucky more than it was testing Steve’s self-control, even if Steve’s grimaces at the worst 90s fashion had to offer _were_ funny. Bucky was still the one who had to walk around all day in the damned clothes, and he was painfully aware that that purple windbreaker was _not_ a good color for him. What was left of the old Bucky Barnes’ pre-war vanity howled miserably every time Bucky got a look at himself in the mirror. _HYDRA hasn’t caught you yet, and even Steve’s fooled, so clearly it’s working_ , he told himself sternly. Though jesus, every damn morning, he grew ever more tempted to take a straight razor to the carpet brush horror on his upper lip.

Parking like a _flashy_ asshole at least got Steve’s attention, and was fun besides, but given that Steve’s reaction was to blush and get even more awkward than usual, that was probably a wash. Bucky didn’t even know what warranted that reaction.

When his mathletes pushed bake sale leftovers on him to take home with him, Bucky figured he’d take the opportunity to make his own friendly gesture. Steve _had_ got him that stupid, overpriced coffee drink after all. And if Bucky just so happened to swap out his boring navy blue sweater for a bright green one that would make him look like Ned Flanders, well. It was the small pleasures that made life worth living, or so he’d heard.

Bucky went next door, tupperware in hand, and rang the doorbell. Belatedly, he realized that Wilson might answer instead of Steve, and shit, he hadn’t thought this through. Before he could panic, he heard footsteps approach the door and pause. He waved at the peephole. _Why the fuck did I just do that_ , he wondered, and then the door opened to reveal Steve, smiling and...was he crying? His face was blotchy and red, eyes shiny.

“Hey, I thought I’d bring over—are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. What’s up?”

He didn’t look fine. If Wilson was making Steve cry, Bucky was going to do a lot worse than park too close to his car. He passed the tupperware to Steve, watching him closely. Damn. No reaction to his Flanders look. Had Steve seriously not watched The Simpsons yet? In Bucky’s admittedly limited experience, you could make up for any amount of popular culture cluelessness with a few Simpsons references.

“The kids I coach had a bake sale today, and we had some leftovers. Thought I’d bring some by, as thanks for the Starbucks the other day.”

“Who’s at the door?” called out Wilson from somewhere inside the house.

“It’s Jack, he brought us cookies.”

“And brownies.”

Wilson came to the door then, and judging by the way his face spasmed and how he choked back a laugh, he caught the Flanders reference. “Hey, neighbor!” said Wilson. Bucky was sorely, sorely tempted to say “Hi-diddly-ho neighborino!” back. Maybe another time. _After he found out who had made Steve cry._  

“Thanks for this,” said Steve, and Bucky stared hard at him. He’d definitely been crying. Super soldiers didn’t get colds. His hand still itched with the urge to check Steve’s temperature. 

“Seriously, you sure you’re okay? You look kinda…”

“It’s fine, I’m fine, we were just watching Grey’s Anatomy,” said Steve, while Wilson glared at him. “What? You said don’t tell Natasha, you didn’t say anything about Jack. Um, wanna join us?” 

Bucky blinked at him, surprised. He had no idea what Grey’s Anatomy was or why it was making Steve cry, but the invitation was equal parts tempting and terrifying. If Steve and Wilson weren’t working on their mission though, Bucky should take the opportunity to work on his. There were things he had to do if he was going to blow up that base.

“Sorry, but I’ve got a lot of tests to grade. Thanks, though,” he said. 

He smiled at Steve, hoping Steve wouldn’t take the refusal as a rejection. Bucky had the vague sense that Steve used to be sensitive about that kind of thing. Steve let him go with a smile, so Bucky didn’t think he was taking it that way now.

When Bucky got back to his house, he looked up Grey’s Anatomy before getting back to work. _A medical drama about surgeons’ love lives? Really, Steve?_

* * *

Bucky could tell Steve and Wilson’s investigations were ramping up, which meant Bucky had to step up his own efforts if he was going to beat them to the HYDRA base in the old mine. The dead ends of the Karpov investigation would only keep them busy for so long. At least the base in the old mine was shaping up to be a straightforward blow-it-up-and-leave job. Sure there was some war loot and gold he’d tracked to the base, but given the creepy, occult cast to the intel about some of that loot, Bucky figured it was best to just blow it all up, even the gold. Playing Robin Hood with HYDRA money was all well and good when it was just a matter of wiring money in and out, but Bucky wasn’t about to saddle anyone with possibly cursed or radioactive gold.

Keeping up with both his teaching work and his HYDRA hunting work made for some late nights. Lucky for him, he didn’t need all that much sleep. And it was a good distraction from stewing over what Steve did or didn’t know.

One late night, he heard movement from outside, closer than the background hum of a suburban neighborhood at rest. He pulled out a gun, just in case, but the sound came from next door: a door opening and closing gently, then the only barely audible creaking of a porch. Steve, probably. Bucky wondered if Steve was finally about to make a break-in attempt. But no, a couple minutes passed in silence, and Bucky had the wild thought: _maybe Steve’s waiting for me_. He’d be able to see the light on in Bucky’s house after all. But no, that was stupid. Steve was probably just getting some air because he couldn’t sleep. He used to do that, sometimes, tiptoeing out of bed to go sit on the fire escape, and Bucky would fall asleep watching him, watching how his bent spine and slim shoulders were relaxed for once. Sometimes they used to talk at night, Bucky didn’t remember about what. Just that it had always seemed easier in the dark.  

It would be easy, now, to step outside and join Steve. Bucky could ask Steve what was keeping him up, and Steve would deflect, and Bucky would let it pass, and regale Steve with funny stories about his students. Steve would laugh, maybe, or at least smile. And maybe he’d share some stories of his own. He had to have plenty of good ones, from the time since he’d been thawed out.

Bucky looked at his screen. He’d been typing nonsense for the past few minutes. Fuck it, he thought, and went outside. Steve was standing on his house’s tiny porch, porch light still off, in sleep pants and a thin t-shirt. 

“Insomniac or just a night owl?” Bucky asked.

“Can’t seem to settle,” answered Steve. “What are you doing up? Don’t you have to be up again in a few hours?”

_Shit shit shit_. What _was_ he doing up? What reason did normal people have to be up at 1 AM on a weeknight? He couldn’t say he was watching TV, Steve would have been able to hear that he hadn’t been.

“Don’t remind me. I do okay on four hours of sleep, but ugh. And, uh, I was just working on a personal project. Got caught up in it, I guess.” Personal project? _Yeah, that doesn’t sound suspicious at all, Barnes. Fuck._

“What kind of project? If you don’t mind me asking,” said Steve. 

Bucky _did_ mind him asking, but saying so would not help this situation at all. _C’mon, improvise_ , he told himself, and winced as his porch creaked and revealed his fidgeting. This was a bad idea.

“No, it’s fine, it’s um, a novel. Just, you know, for fun.”

“Cool!” said Steve, too loud for the late-night quiet. “Uh, that’s cool,” he said, quieter now. “What’s it about?”

“Oh, it’s uh, a spy thriller?” You know what, Bucky was going to go for it. Subtlety was clearly lost on Steve. “Yeah, it’s a spy thriller thing where this guy is trying to bring down a whole...big conspiracy thing.”

“Sounds interesting. When is it set? I like reading about the history of espionage.” _And yet you’re still a terrible spy_ , thought Bucky.

“Oh, it’s modern. With some flashbacks. A lot of flashbacks,” he said grimly.

“A lot of action too, I’m guessing. Like, um, James Bond?” Bucky suppressed a twitch. That was a little too close to his actual name.

“Not as much action as you’d think,” he said, suppressing a probably manic smile. “More investigating and paper trails.”

“Ha. Sounds more realistic that way, I guess,” said Steve. _Sounds safer that way, Steve, you should try it sometime._

Instead of saying what he wanted to, he just said, “Yeah.” Then, to keep the conversation from petering out into awkward silence, or more questions about his nonexistent novel, he asked, “Um, do you have any hobbies? Apart from watching TV shows that make you cry, that is.”

“Not lately. Work, you know.”

Bucky frowned. “Oughta make time. More to life than work.” This was probably the pot calling the kettle black, but hey, Bucky did things that weren’t teaching or HYDRA related. He read books. That...was pretty much it, admittedly.

“Yeah,” Steve sighed. “I used to sketch and draw a lot. Paint, when I could afford the supplies.”

“What’d you draw?” he asked, though he knew the answer. Steve had drawn Brooklyn and Bucky, mostly.

“People, buildings. Nothing special.”

Steve’s art had always seemed pretty fucking special to Bucky. And surely it’d make Steve happier than being Captain America did. Bucky had looked up a lot of photos and footage of Steve in the 21st century. The unhappy furrow on his brow was carved in deep in most of them. 

“Doesn’t matter how special it is or isn’t, as long as it makes you happy, or you have fun doing it,” he said, and suppressed a wince when it came out sounding a bit too teacherly. 

“That the kind of thing you tell your students, Mr. Murphy?” asked Steve, and Bucky could hear the smile in his voice.

He laughed wryly. “What can I say, it’s hard to turn it off.” Steve mentioning his students reminded Bucky that he was supposed to be teaching them in about six hours, and he still had work to finish up. He couldn’t stay out here with Steve all night. Though he wished—it didn’t matter what he wished. It wasn’t happening. “Speaking of, I should probably try to get some sleep before teaching a bunch of teenagers about Riemann sums. Goodnight, Steve.”

“Goodnight.”

* * *

Bucky had expected that Steve and Wilson focusing more on their actual mission would mean Steve would give up on stalking him, but no dice. Steve followed him to work again, only this time, the crazy idiot set up surveillance from the tree outside Bucky’s classroom window. Bucky carefully didn’t react when he heard Steve climbing the tree, just took roll and passed back graded homework to his students.

_What the fuck are you doing, Steve._

Jesus christ, if any of his students decided to look out the window...Bucky risked a quick glance as he got started on the day’s lesson. The foliage was enough to mostly hide Steve from view, and the unwashed state of the window obscured him further. Someone without enhanced vision might not spot him, so long as he kept still. 

Bucky was sorely tempted to call campus security on Steve, but that would probably burn both of their covers, and petty annoyance wasn’t a good enough reason to do that. Probably. But Bucky was annoyed: annoyed that Steve was involving his students in this, however tangentially, annoyed that he was taking such a stupid risk for intel he already had, or could get any number of other ways. What the hell did lurking in a tree to watch him teach even accomplish? If Steve needed confirmation that Jack Murphy was an actual teacher, then he had it within the first few minutes of first period.

Steve stuck around for a lot longer than just first period. He stayed in that tree for three damned class periods. 

_What the fuck._

* * *

When Bucky woke up one morning to everything sounding too loud and looking too bright, all he could think was _no no no no I thought I was done with this_. What the fuck was being a science experiment freak of nature even _good_ for if not unnaturally fast and complete healing from all of that horrifying experimentation? He was coming up on two years of being unwiped, wasn’t that enough goddamn time to heal the damage?

Apparently not. Apparently, every so often, he was just going to get his own personal return trip to the chair in the form of his own goddamn brain doing its best to recreate it via seizures and migraines. At least this wasn’t hitting while he was at work. It was only just past dawn, but he called the school office and left a message that he was calling out sick. The sound of the dial tone might as well have been a jackhammer to his head. The jackhammer didn’t really stop once he put the phone down.

He should do….something, he thought vaguely. There was something else he was supposed to do when this happened. _The mission the mission the mission_ pounded his head, but that wasn’t it, there wasn’t a _mission_ , if there was a mission, there would be techs, and they would—they would—

He lost time, maybe, because the light was different, and it was too bright. He was supposed to do something. Meds. He had meds, for this. And he had to—it was too bright. There was an objective: the medicine, and pulling the curtains closed. He could fulfill the objective, no matter how much it hurt. That was what the body did.

He made it dark, but there was still enough light that it hurt, so he kept his eyes closed as he went to the bathroom. He got the bottle of anticonvulsant pills out and broke it open with his metal hand, then swallowed a couple. It was too late to help with the migraine, but maybe he could avoid a seizure. Or not. The pills came back up along with everything else in his stomach. His head was a grenade going off in excruciating slow motion.

He waited. The bathroom tile was cool. If he closed the bathroom door, it would be as dark as he could get in the house, and it was cool, and it would be kind of like—like—no. He didn’t want that. Time would go away, or maybe he would go away from time, and he liked it better when time was an orderly, observable march. _Pills_. He needed to take the fucking pills. That was the objective.

He got up and swallowed more of them. It didn’t matter how many. They wouldn’t kill him. Nothing killed him. He waited again, but they stayed down. The pills would make him sleepy so he had to get to bed. That was the next objective. It hurt, everything fucking hurt, but he did it.

Eventually, the grenade stopped exploding. Then, after a while, the doorbell rang. It might as well have been a grenade. It stopped, but then—

“Yo, Jack! It’s your neighbors, not the Jehovah’s Witnesses! Come out and move your car!”

Wilson. Fuck, the car. The sounds wouldn’t stop unless Bucky moved the car. Was Steve out there too? He fumbled for his glasses, just in case. He bumped into the bedroom door once, but he made it to the front door with his eyes closed. Opening the door was going to make a noise. And there was—light. Out there. Fuck.

He opened the door a very little bit and said, “Please shut up.” 

“Jack, you okay?” asked Steve, too close and too loud, and nudged the door open more, and then Bucky was on the floor, away from the light. He could stay here a while, until it hurt less. 

“Keys are—um, in the—bowl by the—phone. Can you just—” he said, because maybe they’d just leave, but no. 

Wilson’s voice, from too close, “Hey man, don’t worry about the keys. You okay? You don’t look so hot.” 

No shit.

“Migraine,” he whispered. “Light and sound aren’t—” He clamped his mouth shut when he felt the spasm start up again in his throat.

“Steve, go get a trash can or bucket or something.”

He was sick inside the trash can Steve brought, but not much came up. The pills didn’t anyway, so that was fine.

He could sense Wilson reaching out to touch him, and no no no he was hurting enough right now, and he moved as far back as he could but he just hit the wall. “Don’t—”

“Okay, okay, sorry. No touching, got it. That’s fine. Now I used to be a medic, in the Air Force, and I just wanna make sure you’re okay, alright? Can you just answer a few questions for me?” He didn’t want to, but Wilson wouldn’t go away, otherwise. He made a noise that hopefully conveyed _fine_. “Okay. Have you hit your head any time in the past week? Any numbness or weakness on one side of your body?”

Wilson asked questions and Bucky answered and it was almost like a mission report, only Wilson asked things nicely, kept his voice low. And he didn’t touch Bucky. So Bucky answered, until he stopped wanting to.

“It’s a migraine. Had ‘em before. Just gotta sleep it off. Can you please leave.”

He looked at Wilson, or at least squinted at him, hoping this would convince him Bucky wasn’t about to die or anything. 

“Sure, sure, just wanna make sure you’re not having a stroke or an aneurysm, man.”

“Not,” Bucky said.

Wilson nodded agreeably enough, but he still didn’t leave. Neither did Steve. 

“Also, kinda gotta know if you’ve had any seizures in the last six months.” Not in the last six months, probably. Had he had one earlier? He couldn’t tell. Probably not, he usually felt like a smashed up radio tuned to static after one. His silence seemed to worry Wilson. “Jack. Jack, you with me? You had any seizures in the last six months? This is important, I’m not leaving ‘till I get an answer.”

“…Year. It’s been a year,” he said. He shouldn’t have told Wilson that. Steve was here, and Steve was gonna worry. But maybe Wilson would leave now. 

“Steve, go bring Jack some water,” Wilson ordered. Water sounded pretty good, actually. Wilson asking more questions was not good. 

“Do you have epilepsy? I didn’t notice a medical ID tag.”

His whole shitty getting over a lot of brain frying situation didn’t really count as epilepsy. “I—TBI. I’ve been fine. For a while. Just get migraines sometimes.” It was as close to the truth as it got.

Wilson sucked in a worried breath. “You got any meds I can get for you?”

“Took ‘em already.”

“Yeah? They don’t seem to be working so great right now. How long ago?”

“Um—I don’t know. Time is it?”

“A little after nine,” said Wilson.

“After dawn. It was bright. Should sleep soon,” he said, because he could feel the drugging pull of drowsiness.

“Okay, just drink some water first, alright?”

Steve came back with the water, and he took a few slow sips.

“Hey, I brought a cool towel, do you—can I—”

He gestured with the towel towards Bucky’s forehead. Steve wanted to touch him. If Steve did it, maybe it would be okay. And he looked so worried. So Bucky nodded, and took off his glasses, closed his eyes. Steve set the towel over his eyes, and it felt good, way better than the bathroom floor. Steve being close felt good too. He sighed in relief and leaned into Steve a little.

“C’mon, let’s get you up and to bed. That’s the room you can make darkest, right?” Wilson kept talking as Steve helped Bucky up, but Bucky wasn’t paying attention because Steve was touching him and the touch was—okay. Steve’s hands were warm and careful. It was good. He kind of wanted more of it, but then they were at his bed, and he probably didn’t have so much consciousness left. The fucking pills were finally kicking in properly.

Bed was warm and dark, especially if he put the pillow over his head, but Wilson and Steve still didn’t leave. He heard them whispering indistinct things, then Wilson said, “Hey, Jack, I’m gonna leave my number, okay? Can you text or call in a couple hours, let us know how you’re doing?”

Bucky lifted the pillow from over his head. “…Why?”

“We’re gonna worry, otherwise. Don’t want to come back tonight and find you cracked your skull open when you fell on the floor during a seizure, man. I don’t need that kinda guilt,” said Wilson.

That was unlikely to happen, for a variety of reasons. He just wanted to sleep. Someone kneeled down by his bed, and then ran a hand through his hair, gentle and slow. Bucky tensed at first, but—a memory or memories rose up and tugged him down deeper towards sleep. It was Steve, so it was alright. 

“Please?” asked Steve, quiet and pleading. Ugh. Steve knew Bucky always gave in when he used that voice. Using the small, sad voice was _cheating_.

“Unfair, Stevie,” he complained, and then said, “Fine.” 

* * *

When he woke up a few hours later, his head was clear enough to panic about how unclear his head had just been. He lurched to the garage to check his security setup and all his data feeds: blessedly normal and clear, and no signs anyone else had been in the garage. He relaxed then, and the unhappy remains of his migraine registered their disapproval of him leaving the dark and warm confines of his bedroom.

He went back to bed. Except—wait. Someone had been here. There was a glass of water on the nightstand, and the wastebasket from the bathroom was by the bed. And there was a scrap of paper on top of his phone, in unfamiliar handwriting, with two phone numbers by the names _Sam_ and _Steve_. His heart started pounding hard enough that he felt his pulse in his head, each pump of blood like a battering ram. Had he blown his cover? He thought he remembered Steve—maybe he’d been dreaming. 

Fuck the HYDRA-formulated anticonvulsants, they made everything so goddamn fuzzy. But fuzzy was better than seizing, so he just had to think past the fog. Had he said anything? Had Steve, or Wilson? Had he hurt them? He looked at his hands, his wrists, the right one clean and unbruised, the nano mesh still in place over the left. He listened to his body. His head didn’t feel like it was exploding anymore, but it did still feel like it was being lovingly crushed in a vice. He was thirsty, and hungry. Right. He’d been sick, earlier, and hadn’t eaten anything since last night besides.

He’d been sick, and then—the doorbell rang, Wilson and Steve had been at the door. They’d come to the door, because Bucky’s car was still blocking theirs. And they’d helped him, kind of. _Call or text us, let us know how you’re doing_ , Wilson had asked. Okay. That was—fine. Neighborly. But _Steve_ , had Steve—he couldn’t hold onto it. His head still hurt too much.

He texted Wilson and Steve: _not dead_. The response from Wilson came quickly: _wanna be a little more forthcoming?_ Bucky did not want to be more forthcoming. Was there an emoji thing for that? He squinted at his phone. Ah, a middle finger. That would do. He tapped the little image, hit send, and went back to sleep.

* * *

By late afternoon, the migraine subsided into a more bearable headache. Just when Bucky was starting to panic about Steve and Wilson’s whereabouts—surely they weren’t already hitting the HYDRA base, they couldn’t have collected enough intel yet—he heard a gentle knocking at the front door. When he saw it was Steve and Wilson, his shoulders locked up somewhere between relief and trepidation, sending a pang of warning pain up along his neck. Maybe he could text them to go away. Or pretend to be asleep. That would probably end in Steve breaking in though. He opened the door.

“How are you feeling?” asked Steve.

His eyes were wide and worried, his gaze roaming over Bucky to take in every detail. Still, he didn’t ask, _so hey, by the way, are you my formerly dead best friend_ , and he didn’t pull Bucky close with a hand on the back of his neck, or on his shoulder, the way he used to during the war, after some close call or near-miss. Which was disappointing, maybe. 

“It’s down to a dull roar instead of a pickaxe to the brain, so I’m alright,” Bucky said, then leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms. “Um, thank you. For helping.”

“No problem, glad you’re feeling better,” said Wilson, with evident sincerity. He really had been nice, earlier. Bucky wasn’t going to stop parking like an asshole, that was necessary for the mission, but he’d feel a tiny bit bad about it now.

Maybe he’d just imagined it as he fell asleep, but had Steve—

Bucky looked at Steve, trying to find an answer on his face. Steve blushed, and Bucky thought, _oh_. 

“You okay?” he asked.

Steve cleared his throat, scratched at the back of his neck. A nervous tell. When his hair had been longer, he’d push it back, and—had he done that for Bucky, earlier? Because Bucky knew that feeling, Steve’s fingers in his hair, gentle and slow. 

Looking at Steve’s blush, he knew: Steve had touched him like that, and Bucky had let him. Then, and today. He’d been half out of his head and he hadn’t let Wilson put a hand on him, but he’d let Steve touch him. It had been easy, to let Steve touch him. It didn’t feel like it would be easy now, but still—he wanted.

“Yeah, yeah, I just—I was worried. About you,” said Steve. If he was admitting it instead of busting Bucky’s balls, he really had been worried. Bucky didn’t want him to worry. 

So Bucky smiled and said, “I’m okay.” He looked Steve in the eye, and for that moment, their idiotic covers slipped away, and it was just them, Steve and Bucky. “It’s okay,” he said, with all the gentleness he could muster, and hoped Steve understood.

To his horror, Steve’s eyes went wet and shiny. And still, he didn’t say anything. _You know it’s me, you have to know it’s me_ , he thought, but before he could think of anything else to say, Wilson spoke. Bucky had forgotten he was here.

“Um, I’ll just go then. Make dinner. Yeah. See you, Jack,” said Wilson, walking to the house next door as he talked.

Steve clenched his fists, and a muscle in his jaw ticked. Something deep inside Bucky flinched and the threat assessments kicked in again: he could block a blow, a kick would throw Steve back, there was a knife inside above the doorjamb—he was so fucking tired of this. _It’s just Steve,_ he pleaded with himself. _He’s not the mission, or a handler_. He didn’t let any of it show on his face.

Instead he just said, “See you tomorrow, Steve,” and closed the door with a strained smile.

He stayed behind the closed door and listened to Steve walk away. Now he was the one whose eyes were stinging with tears. His head throbbed warningly, and he winced. He wanted his best friend back. He wanted to stop fighting with himself about how Steve was safe, Steve had to be safe.

Would it stop, if they gave up on these stupid covers?

After he handled this base and neither of them had a mission to distract them, he’d talk to Steve, he’d come clean. 

* * *

Steve and Wilson were fucking up Bucky’s plans.

They’d poked the pathetic hornet nest that was what remained of HYDRA’s presence in Ohio, and now Bucky had to worry about someone getting to that HYDRA base in the old mine before Bucky could blow it. The last thing he goddamn needed was a bunch of HYDRA bottom feeders ransacking that base of all its probably dangerous artifacts, then making a run for it. Bucky did not want to chase these assholes across North America.

As he looked at all the satellite imagery of the base in chronological order, he frowned. He knew the base wasn’t staffed; it was more or less just a warehouse for war loot and some raw resources, only stuck deep in an old mine. He wasn’t surprised that it had fallen off the radar of most HYDRA operatives, who had rushed to secure active, staffed bases first. He still expected more traffic to and from the base than this, especially after he’d ensured HYDRA had some serious liquidity problems. Except there was traffic _to_ it—a trickle of “hikers” and off-road vehicles—just no traffic _from_ it.

Huh.

At times like this, Bucky’s day job was incredibly inconvenient. Usually he found it easy to leave all his shit behind once he was in the classroom. Now he was rushing through lessons, and checking his phone way too often, worried that Steve and Wilson were about to make a move on the base, worried that he’d see something on the news: _MYSTERIOUS EXPLOSION IN APPALACHIA, HUNDREDS OF ACRES OF FOREST BURNING_.

“Mr. Murphy, if you get to check your phone, does that mean we can too?” asked one of his students with saccharine innocence.

_You can if you’re using them to fight HYDRA instead of gossiping with each other_ , he didn’t say. Instead he said, “No, that’s just the privilege and burden of adulthood. But I’m sorry, you’re all giving me your attention, you deserve mine back,” and didn’t check his phone again until the bell rang.

At the end of the school day, he rushed home to find Steve and Wilson still there, to his relief. He still had time to move on the base ahead of them. And Steve, it seemed, was too busy to tail or otherwise stalk him. It was as good a chance as any. He made the drive to HYDRA base and planted cameras around the old mine, stashed his explosives, then went looking for any sign of the HYDRA agents he’d seen go in on the satellite imagery. All he found was their vehicles hidden in some overgrown foliage, abandoned.

_Okay, there’s definitely something up with that base._

* * *

Over the next couple days, the cameras showed a whole lot of nothing, mostly. No Steve and Wilson, thankfully, but three HYDRA operatives did go into the base. They didn’t come back out.

Maybe there was just bad air in there, but he doubted it. His luck wasn’t that good. As soon as it wasn’t a school night, he was going in.

* * *

Bucky left early in the morning for the old mine, taking his motorcycle this time, with a pack full of weapons and his Winter Soldier gear. He’d kept the gear. He could have cobbled together a different tactical uniform. Hell, he could have pulled a Steve and stolen his old uniform back from the Smithsonian. But there was a strange kind of comfort in the Winter Soldier gear, in its familiarity, and it was his, after all, like the arm was. Like the damned name was, and the blood on his hands, and the nightmares. They were _his_.   

He changed there in the forest, taking the nano mesh off, putting the mask on. He took his time doing a thorough sweep of the forest surrounding the mine, disabling his cameras and picking up his explosives on the way, and looked for any hint of what waited for him inside the base. There was nothing. The deer were unbothered, and the birds sang blithely. If something was wrong inside that mine, the forest outside it didn’t know.

According to old survey maps of the area, there was an alternate entrance to the mine, bricked up decades ago. The old brick didn’t stand up against his metal fist and a small shaped charge. He waited, and listened, as the dust cleared. No alarms, which was good. He didn’t have a canary to check the air, but he did have an air quality monitor that beeped cheerfully green. The geiger counter was equally unbothered. _Dammit._ Couldn’t have been any of the easy possibilities, could it.

He descended into the mine, setting and wiring the explosives as he went. Bucky had spent a lot of time in various creepy underground HYDRA bases, and this one was largely indistinguishable from any of the rest of them, except there was no hum of activity or machinery, just the mosquito buzzing of the lights, only half of which were still working.

So what the hell had happened to the dozen or so HYDRA assholes who’d walked in, but hadn’t walked back out?

Well. It turned out shambling undead corpses had happened to them.

* * *

_How do you kill what’s already dead?_ Bucky wondered, like it was the world’s least fun riddle, as he dodged corpse after corpse, who were, oh great, wearing assorted Nazi and HYDRA uniforms. Had living Nazis not caused him enough grief? Now he still had to deal with them after they were dead? _Fuck this shit._ Bucky wasn’t a fan of violence nowadays, but these fuckers were already dead. They should stay that way. He pulled out his guns and started firing.  

At least headshots seemed to kind of work, but even then, what was left of the body still crawled and skittered along, and the sickening greenish purple glow around the corpses remained no matter how damaged they were. And fuck, the _smell_. Not even his mask could filter enough of it out.

Whatever was animating the corpses, it wasn’t anything close to natural. Whatever was animating them, it should stay in this mine and never come out.

The corpses couldn’t move too fast at least, so as long as Bucky stayed ahead of them, he could finish wiring the place to blow. He ran the numbers in his head: how much explosive he had left, how long it would take him to get back out, how long to set the timer for, how much ammo he had…a dozen different ways to fulfill the mission objective, hundreds of different variables. Who knew what else was in here. He wasn’t about to take the risking of finding out. The only acceptable outcome was to get out of here.

When his mental map of the mine told him he was approaching the entrance, he set the timer running down on the charges, and began outrunning the dead in earnest. They were no match for his speed, but there were a lot of them, and they were swarming from every corridor and shaft in the mine. A machete to clear his way would have been helpful right about now. Instead, he had to make do with battering away at the corpses with his metal arm. They were stronger than anything that was literally decomposing had any right to be.

He was running towards the main entrance of the mine with seven minutes and 38 seconds to spare when he heard it: voices, living voices, not the moans and groans of the dead, and gunfire. The missing HYDRA operatives? He stopped, strained his hearing. Seven minutes and 28 seconds. Was that _Steve’s_ voice? _Fuck fuck fuck_. He turned back.

_God fucking dammit, Steve, you couldn’t have left this one to me?_ Back at one of the main shafts of the mine, Steve and Wilson were close to being overrun by the shambling, rotting corpses. They must have come in by the main entrance, then used the mine cart, because they were terrible spies who didn’t know anything about stealth. Six minutes. Time to use his rifle. He shot at the swarm of decaying bodies surrounding Steve and Wilson, giving them enough room to run for the top of the shaft and towards the entrance. Bucky met them halfway, clearing corpses from their path.

“Because that’s what this day needed! The Winter Fucking Soldier! Great!” shouted a wild-eyed Wilson. _Well my day’s not fuckin’ improved seeing you assholes in here either_ , Bucky would have said, had he not been too goddamn busy punching reanimated Nazi corpses.

He braced himself for Steve’s reaction, the shock and the anger, maybe even betrayal, but when he looked, Steve was beaming at him like Bucky was a surprise birthday party and the best gift he could ever get all in one. No one had ever looked so goddamn thrilled to see the Winter Soldier, Bucky was sure of that. He flushed hot, and dearly hoped the mask covered it.

“Bucky?”

Yeah, now was not the time or place for their emotional reunion. “Go!” he shouted at Steve.

“What? Bucky—”

“I said, go! I set this place to blow, the whole mine’s gonna collapse in four minutes and forty-five seconds, get outside!”

Once Steve and Wilson fought their way to him, Bucky threw Wilson clear of the worst of the crush of undead, grinning under his mask at Wilson’s protests. He tossed Wilson a gun to shut him up, then turned towards Steve. Maybe he could just chuck Steve clear too. Steve must have been able to see him thinking it because he got that mulish, fight-me look on his face, and said, “Hell no.”

They didn’t have time to argue about it. They fought off the now mostly skeletal corpses together, Wilson giving them cover fire from behind, and it was—easy. Fighting at Steve’s side was easy. It didn’t seem to matter that the last time they’d fought, they’d been fighting each other. Now Bucky’s body followed Steve’s lead, stayed in sync with him. Steve was a terrible dancer, but this was a dance, and one they were both good at. Was it some supersoldier thing, or was it just them? Their childhood of alley brawls and playground scuffles certainly hadn’t been like this.  

“Two minutes,” Bucky said, and sped up their push for the mine’s entrance.

The bodies were now mostly skeletons in disintegrating gray uniforms, more and more of them surging forward with a terrible clacking clatter. Steve tripped on the bones that were rolling under their feet, and before Bucky could help him back up, skeletal arms and hands grasped at him. He bludgeoned at them with his metal arm, shattering bone and throwing some dismembered limbs clear, but there were too many of them, skittering like insects, and one got hold of his mask and pulled it off.

Well, shit.

“I knew it! I fucking knew it! You giant fucking jerk!” Steve shouted.

“Now is not the time! One minute thirty!” And it wasn’t, it really wasn’t the time, they had to outrun the undead and an explosion, but goddamn was the look on Wilson’s face _hilarious_.

“Neighbor Jack? What the fuck?”

Steve shoved at Wilson to get him moving, throwing a grenade behind them as they ran. They all ran full-tilt for the door, kicking off and stepping on skeletal and rotting limbs the whole way. The second Wilson and Steve were clear, Bucky slammed the mine’s blast door shut and then stood back as the explosions boomed through the mine and shook the door. God, he hoped all those corpses got turned to dust in there.

They all took a long moment to catch their breaths. Bucky leaned against a tree, lest his legs give out in sheer relief.

“Everyone okay?” asked Steve.

Wilson just kept staring at Bucky in enraged confusion. It was _great_.

“Yeah, I’m fine. But I repeat: what the fuck?”

Bucky fought the manic grin that wanted to take up residence on his face, and settled for a smirk instead. “Hi-diddly-ho neighborino,” he said to Wilson, and the reaction was, honestly, almost worth this entire ridiculous farce, undead Nazis included.

* * *

The explanations went about as well as could be expected. Wilson, it turned out, genuinely hadn’t recognized him, hadn’t ever even suspected. Steve had. Bucky wondered what Steve meant when he said _it maybe wouldn’t have been the first time I thought some random guy was you_.

With Wilson there as a buffer, demanding explanations, it was easy to keep things focused on the mission. Even if Steve was staring at him with big, starry eyes, and even if Steve was clearly exercising every bit of his self control to keep from throwing himself at Bucky, whether to wrestle or hug, Bucky couldn’t quite tell. It would be okay, maybe, if Steve hugged him. It had to be okay.

_Keep it the fuck together, Barnes_ , he thought, and steered everyone clear of the hard questions for now. The hard questions like _do you remember_ and _why didn’t you come to me earlier, Buck_ and _do you want to come with us on our violent HYDRA revenge mission_. And okay, Bucky maybe snapped a little when Wilson dared to suggest that Bucky was the one with the crazy plan here, but he figured he was justified. Bucky’s life plan was a fucking _model_ of sanity, _Wilson_.

Then Steve had to go and be so— _Steve_.

“It’s Stephen, with a ph,” said Steve, as if that would suddenly make his cover rock solid.

He was blushing and scowling that stormy scowl that hadn’t changed since they were in short pants. The expression used to seem almost too big for his face; now it looked almost grave, but the pout on his lips gave him away. That was the same as it had always been. What a stupid fucking cover. Steve had always been shit at coming up with explanations for the nights he snuck out with Bucky, or the times he’d tried to hide the evidence of Bucky ditching school to visit him when he was sick.

_Where did these comics come from, Steven?_ Mrs. Rogers would ask, while Bucky hid under the bed, or out on the fire escape. And Steve, dear, idiot Steve, would stammer out some total bullshit like _they fell onto the fire escape, Ma!_ Needless to say, they’d always gotten caught. It had always been worth it.

Bucky loved this asshole so goddamn much. It bubbled and fizzed out of him in a laugh.

“I really missed you,” he told Steve, smiling helplessly. Steve’s scowl melted into softness, and there were those starry eyes again. A pretty sight, especially with his embarrassed flush. Bucky hid a flush of his own, and kept walking.

* * *

They traded intel on the way back to their vehicles, and Bucky was _so close_ to getting through this without any uncomfortable, hard questions. But Steve just had to ask.

“Buck. Please. How are you, really? You had that migraine the other week, are you okay? How much do you—”

Bucky stopped walking. “My head—don’t worry about that. Hurts sometimes, less than it used to. It’s just leftover shit from all that brain scrambling, far as I can tell. And how much do I remember? Can’t be sure,” he said, and laughed without humor. “That’s the answer to everything, really. I can’t be sure. But it was—bad, at first, really—”

He felt it then, the tight feeling in his throat and lungs, the way the words, any words, to talk about it, any of it, all turned to static in his head. _No_. Bucky couldn’t talk about it. He couldn’t talk about it in group, and he couldn’t talk about it with Steve. He had reached his limit bearing any of it at all the first time and then experiencing it all over again in the remembering of it, again and again, and— _no_. Maybe someday, a long, long time from now, he could give Steve the notebooks, and say, _this is what it was like_. But right now—

“—and now it’s not, and—I don't wanna talk about it. I remember enough. More than I’d like, maybe.”

Steve, for a wonder, let it lie, and Bucky spent the rest of the walk focusing on his breathing. Christ, he was a fucking mess.

He’d have time to pull himself together on the ride back, at least. Steve and Wilson had left their car in the same clearing near where Bucky had stashed his motorcycle. They, of course, had not bothered to hide their car.

“You got a ride out of here, Barnes?” asked Wilson. Instead of answering, Bucky just went to retrieve his motorcycle from under its camouflage.

“I’ll see you back in Cleveland,” he told them, and began walking the bike back to the road.

Steve made big sad eyes at him, shifting from foot to foot. “Can I—?” he asked, gesturing towards the bike.

Bucky wasn’t opposed to riding with Steve, but— “I only have one helmet,” he said, frowning over at him.

“That’s—who cares about helmets!” Steve was practically vibrating with indignation now, even if his eyes were still distinctly puppy dog like. 

The cops cared, for one, and Bucky wasn’t eager to be pulled over with Captain America’s shield and a lot of guns stashed on his bike. And even apart from that— “Well I don’t know about you, Steve, but I’ve had enough brain damage for a lifetime. So I care about helmets.” Steve did look somewhat abashed now, though all the fight had not yet gone out of the set of his jaw. “Go with Wilson, I’ll see you two back at the house. Might get there a little later than you two, I’ve gotta swap the bike for my car.” 

He pulled his helmet out from the saddlebag and was about to put it on when Steve’s voice stopped him.

“Promise. Promise you’ll come back,” said Steve, his voice low and shaking, as close to desperate as Bucky ever remembered hearing from him. 

Oh. He was really upset. He always tried to hide it under anger, not that he ever fooled Bucky. Steve’s trembling chin and mouth gave him away. He put on a good effort to hide it with that stubborn jaw clench and glare, but Bucky saw, and he knew.

“Steve. Of course I’m coming back,” he said, and held Steve’s eyes, willing him to believe it. Bucky probably didn’t deserve that trust after two years of staying away from Steve. But, god, Steve had to know: Bucky had always wanted to come back. He had always wanted to stay with Steve.

“Don’t. Don’t make out like I’m the one being crazy, James Buchanan Barnes. It’s been two years since I found out you were alive and almost five since I ended up in this century and you were gone, you were dead—” 

Steve’s voice broke then, and that was it, Bucky couldn’t leave him like this. He dropped the helmet and went to Steve. This had to be more than worth the possible panic attack later.

He was doing this hugging thing wrong maybe, his arms having more memories of holds and takedowns than of embraces. For just a second it felt like Steve was going to fight his way out of Bucky’s arms, but it was just a second, and then Steve was holding onto him tight, like he wanted to fuse them together. Bucky waited for his own body to panic, or for the threat assessment to overtake what was supposed to be about comfort. But it didn’t. Steve tucked his face in against Bucky’s neck, where Bucky could feel the dampness of tears against his skin, and Steve remained just Steve in his arms. Not the mission and not a threat and not Captain America. Just Steve. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said into Steve’s ear. “I wasn’t ready before. I’m not going anywhere, okay? I promise.” Some of his own tears fell into Steve’s hair. Neither of them loosened their hold on each other.

Eventually Steve did let go, and Bucky tried to get a hold of himself, which mostly involved a lot of discreet sniffling and rapid blinking away of more tears. It was the same with Steve. Jesus, if Bucky didn’t leave now, they were going to spend the night hugging in the forest. The thought was way too appealing.

“Okay that was touching and everything, but we really gotta get going,” said Wilson.

* * *

On the long ride back to Cleveland, Bucky couldn’t help but wonder _what’s next?_ and worry. He began to regret not letting Steve ride with him, helmet or no helmet. Already, their reunion felt surreal and ephemeral, the giddy and abrupt ending of a long, bizarre nightmare. He could do with the warm, real weight of Steve at his back, a reminder that it had all actually happened. Even the undead Nazis part.

Yeah, no, Bucky wasn’t going to focus on the undead Nazis. He’d held Steve, and Steve had held him, and it had been okay. It was still okay, the touch lingering as warmth and ease instead of the skin-crawling afterimage of fear, or pain. That was enough to hang some hope on.

* * *

When Bucky got back to the house, Steve was waiting for him on the porch, hands in his pockets, a hesitant set to his broad shoulders. Even in the dark, he could see Steve’s sigh of relief, though it took Bucky smiling at him to make his shoulders lower and relax. Bucky tipped his head towards the door in silent invitation, and Steve followed him into the house. If Bucky was going to have to answer all those hard questions he’d been avoiding, he wanted to do it inside where they wouldn’t wake the whole neighborhood.

But when Steve walked in, he didn’t launch into any questions or shouting, instead he immediately started looking around the house with far more interest than the fairly bare interior deserved. Bucky wondered what the house told him.

There was a lot Bucky could say about tonight’s undead nightmare, but here, at home, with dawn too close, he went with, “Thanks for not raiding that base on a school night.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Murphy,” said Steve with a sideways grin, and Bucky laughed.

Steve didn’t seem inclined to talk just yet, continuing his examination of Bucky’s admittedly spare house. There was no judgment in Steve’s gaze, only an avid curiosity that made Bucky feel almost shy. Steve smiled a little at Bucky’s books, then smiled wider still at the photos he had up on the fridge. It was more of a relief than it should have been.

There was nothing he was ashamed of Steve seeing here, this was a house, not a squat or bolthole. Bucky was living like a normal damn person, copious weaponry stashes aside, and he didn’t want for anything: the house was clean and comfortable, and meant for a small family, so Bucky had more space than he really knew what to do with. Watching Steve now, he couldn’t help but think it would be nice to fill some of that space with Steve. His students would probably tell him to have some chill.

“You done snooping?” he asked.

“No,” said Steve, shameless. Bucky rolled his eyes, and headed for the bedroom. Steve could snoop to his heart’s content, but the long, hard day was catching up with Bucky. He wanted to sleep, for a few hours at least.

“I’m surprised you didn’t try to break in,” he told Steve.

Steve was not abashed. “That was gonna be my next step,” he said, and followed Bucky to the bedroom.

Steve did more than just follow Bucky to the bedroom. He stripped down to t-shirt and boxers, and began turning down the covers on the bed. A small thrill of alarm sounded in Bucky, but only weakly, drowned out by helpless affection for Steve’s bullheadedness. Leave it to Steve to just power through any awkwardness with sheer, blithe force of will. As far as Steve was probably concerned, they’d shared a bed before, they could do it again, seventy years of ice be damned.

“I take it we’re bunking together tonight,” said Bucky, not even bothering to make it a question.

“Yeah. You got a problem with that?” asked Steve, with affected nonchalance.

Bucky was tired, and he’d successfully hugged Steve, hadn’t he? He and Steve had shared a bed before, so many times that Bucky probably wouldn’t remember all of them even without amnesia. So fuck it, if Steve wanted to go for it, Bucky would too. He could always sneak out to the couch if it didn’t work.

“No,” he told Steve, with what he hoped was equal nonchalance, and went to turn off the light before getting in the bed.

They faced each other like this was a sleepover and they were kids again, only both the bed and Steve were a lot bigger now. Bucky waited for the discomfort of being so close to someone, but it didn’t come. Even in the dark, even decades later, Steve’s face was familiar. More than familiar, Bucky could admit: beloved. Maybe that was what made this okay.

Steve started grinning into his face, like a maniac, and Bucky laughed a little, knowing exactly what he was thinking. His mustache probably did not improve upon closer examination.

“I know, but it worked, didn’t it?” he said to Steve’s ridiculous grinning face, and Steve shrugged, his smile subsiding from manic to soft.

“I still knew you,” said Steve, and put his thumb on the dimple in Bucky’s chin. It fit perfectly. Maybe that stupid cleft in his chin was actually good for something.

“Oh, that’s what gave me away, huh?” asked Bucky, smiling back at Steve.

“Yeah,” said Steve. “And this.” Steve touched Bucky’s jaw next, his fingertips catching along the stubble there, his touch gentle against Bucky’s skin. Bucky’s breath hitched, but not with fear. No memory rose up to echo this touch. It was a wholly new thing, almost overwhelming, even as the touch was so light as to be weightless. When his eyes closed almost without his volition, Steve reached up to cup his face in his broad, warm palms. The pads of Steve’s thumbs brushed against Bucky’s eyelashes, another feather light touch. “And these too,” Steve said, his voice as soft as his hands.

Bucky couldn’t remember anyone ever touching him like this. How had he ever thought Steve wouldn’t recognize him? Steve knew him down to his damned eyelashes. 

“I missed you so damn much, Buck. Why didn’t you let me find you?” asked Steve, in a voice wounded enough to inflict an answering ache in Bucky.

Steve deserved an answer. Bucky didn’t know if he had a good one.

“Wasn’t safe. And I wasn’t—” Bucky couldn’t find the right words, didn’t know how or what he could tell Steve about those first months, about the year after.

There weren’t words, for it—not for the pain, or for the remembering. But it hadn’t been about _Steve_ , he had to tell Steve that, Steve had to know. He just—couldn’t. Bucky shook his head, and looked at Steve, willing him to understand. 

If there wasn’t understanding in his eyes, there was at least sympathy. Steve touched his shoulder and his arm then, stroking up and down, in slow, easy sweeps. It made Bucky’s spine go loose and liquid, like Steve was drawing tension out of him with each pass of his hand.

Bucky had to find some goddamned words for Steve. He settled on, “I don’t think I’m the Bucky you knew,” because no matter what Bucky looked like, it was the truth, and Steve would realize it soon enough. He was, at best, an approximation of the old Bucky Barnes, mixed up with whoever he was now, plus a whole lot of ugly mess. 

“You don’t have to be,” said Steve, moving closer. It made the space between them even warmer, and Bucky wanted him closer. Bucky _wanted_ him closer, and he didn’t care if his stupid body put up a belated objection to that. So far, Steve touching him felt good. Maybe it’d feel good the other way around too. He put a hand on Steve’s hip and tugged Steve closer still. Steve didn’t seem to mind. Neither, it turned out, did Bucky, his heartbeat still placid and even.  

“I don’t think I’m the Steve you knew either,” added Steve, and his mouth quirked with that smile that wasn’t a smile, just a sad, sideways curve of his lips. Had Bucky always wanted to kiss that away when he saw it? Or was that just now?

He settled for touching Steve’s soft beard, his cheek. “Yeah, this is new. It suits you, actually.” Steve’s sad smile eased into a small, real one. Bucky wanted to kiss that smile even more than the sad one. But Steve had to know— “I knew you. Before I knew my name, I knew you.”

He didn’t know if that was enough to convey the hugeness of what Steve was to him, or if Steve understood what he meant. He didn’t know if he even wanted Steve to understand the roaring, profound confusion of knowing so little about himself, and what it had meant to still know Steve, somehow, through all of that. It would hurt Steve, probably, to know that Bucky had always known him as that hand, reaching out, before he fell. He would take it as a failure, as a burden to carry. Bucky didn’t want what had been a comfort to him to be a burden to Steve. But Steve had to know that Bucky _knew_ him, that not even HYDRA had taken him away entirely.

Steve must have understood enough, because something dawned in his eyes, as bright and overwhelming as the sun. The only thing Bucky could think to do was to rise to meet it with a kiss. _Abort abort abort_ screeched the ever-dwindling part of Bucky that had any sense at all. _You are fucking up your perfectly nice reunion!_ He pulled away before Steve could.

“Sorry, sorry—we didn’t—we didn’t do that, before? Did we? I didn’t—”

Steve clenched a fist in Bucky’s shirt before he could move away any further.

“No, we didn’t.”

Bucky flinched. Of course. He knew that. “Right, yeah, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“But I wanted to. So bad, Buck,” said Steve, and kissed him.

It started clumsy and awkward, neither of them fitting together quite right, until Bucky had the bright idea to move Steve where he wanted him, and then he could kiss Steve properly, take things further than pressing their lips together—but it still didn’t feel quite right, not matching up to Bucky’s memories of other kisses. There was something persistently annoying and itchy happening on his face—Steve giggled against his mouth and pulled away.

“Fuck, that tickles,” said Steve, and yeah, that was it, this fucking mustache. Bucky laughed, but he also began immediately plotting the mustache’s demise. Sure, yeah, his cover, whatever: kissing Steve properly felt decidedly more important than that right now.

As tempted as he was to go immediately shave, he just said, “And you’re giving me beard burn, Rogers.”

Steve moved in for another kiss, apparently undeterred, and Bucky smiled into it. They didn’t last much longer this time before Bucky’s upper lip began itching and Steve’s nose twitched, and then they were both laughing again.

“Sorry, sorry, I’ll shave it off in the morning, I promise,” said Bucky.

Steve smiled dopily at him. “Awww, you don't have to, Buck. Not on my account, anyway. I don’t mind it so much, honest.”

Bucky examined Steve’s face for evidence of a lie, and, to his shock, didn’t find it.

“Fuck’s sake, Rogers, what kind of true love is this that you’re okay with this thing on my face?”

He expected Steve to make a joke, but Steve’s eyes went wide, almost scared. “It is. True love, that is. I mean, I love you. I have for, I don’t know, a long time.”

Here was the truth hidden between the lines and in the blank spaces of his notebooks, and maybe it was both an old and new truth: Steve loved him, and Steve wanted him. Bucky wasn’t alone; Steve, as ever, was reaching out for him, and this time, neither of them was going to miss. 

He kissed Steve again, deep and desperate, heedless now of all the little annoyances of bumping noses and scratchy facial hair, until they were both gasping and breathless, until Steve pulled away.

He wanted the kiss to be answer enough, but—words. Bucky had to use his damn words. Bucky had to make sure Steve knew he was reaching back. 

“Yeah, I—I don’t remember how long I’ve loved you, but I know I did. I do,” he told Steve, and Steve put his arms around him, tight.

They didn’t do much other than hold each other for a long time. Bucky, feeling bold and maybe kind of high on all this contact after so long without, eased his right hand up under Steve’s shirt to touch the bare skin of his back. He moved his hand up and down Steve’s smooth skin, and Steve sighed happily, his breathing slowing.

“Feels nice, Buck,” mumbled Steve, and then he was asleep.

It did feel nice. The way Steve’s back rose and fell with his breaths, the heat of his skin. The way Bucky could touch him, and have it not hurt either of them. Skin against skin: did it feel like a miracle to everyone else? It did to Bucky.

He waited for the unwelcome return of reality, for the blaring mental alarms and the _not safe not safe not safe_ and the calculations of escape routes and how to disable the target, there was always a target, but—not tonight. Tonight he and Steve were holding onto each other, and it felt safe. Steve was asleep already and most of the neighborhood was asleep, and Bucky was aware, still, of the paperboy driving past in his car, four thumps up and down along the street as he threw the heavy Sunday newspapers onto porches before driving away, but that was safe. He was aware of the dog barking one street over, the sound demanding but not aggressive, and that was safe too.

Steve breathed deep and easy in Bucky’s arms, his body heavy and relaxed with sleep. He was rosy-cheeked, flushed from the almost uncomfortable heat of their bodies so close together in the warm bed. Even so, Steve didn’t seem inclined to let Bucky go. That was fine; Bucky wasn’t inclined to let him go either.

It wouldn’t always feel like this, he knew. There were still hard questions to ask and to answer. Would Steve stay, would Bucky, what happened next…for now though, Bucky would take the reprieve, for however long he he had it. He matched his breathing to Steve’s, and slept.

 


	11. a glowing young ruffian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What, are you trying to get back at Barnes for his mustache? It’s not like he’s Sam, a mustache isn’t going to fool him into not recognizing you,” said Natasha.
> 
> “Hey! Uncalled for! I can totally recognize Steve even with a copstache!”
> 
> “And yet, Bucky’s Flanders ‘stache proved too much for you,” said Steve. “And no, I’m not trying to get _back_ at him, really…”
> 
> He knew Bucky would recognize him no matter what. If Bucky could recognize him after he’d practically doubled in height and size, and while Bucky was half-delirious on a creepy Nazi lab table no less, some facial hair wasn’t going to prove much of an obstacle. But okay, maybe, just maybe, the real goal was to throw a mustache-shaped wrench in Bucky’s probably exquisitely romantic and date night-winning plans. At this point, Steve was behind enough in date night wins that he wasn’t above a bit of harmless sabotage to even the score.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY 100TH BIRTHDAY, STEVE. have a fic in which i address chris evans' terrible lobby hero look, because i guess this series is just where i work out my feelings about sebastian stan and chris evans' facial hair choices.
> 
> Chapter title from The National's "Racing Like A Pro."

“Okay, you know what, I think the mustache has really been maligned as an effective disguise. The classics are a classic for a reason.”

Natasha was leaning against the hotel bathroom doorway with her hand at her mouth, seemingly to tap her fingers thoughtfully against her lips, but actually to hide the smile she was failing to keep from breaking out. Steve didn’t blame her. And he thought Bucky’s mustache had been bad. The carpet brush left on his upper lip after he shaved off the rest of his beard was an order of magnitude worse. 

If the overgrown mountain man beard he’d been growing for the past few days hadn’t clashed with his cover for the rest of this mission, he’d have kept that, but unfortunately for Steve—for all of them, really—the wild beard that had let Steve blend in at a biker bar to chase down leads wouldn’t work for the next phase of this particular mission. That left Steve with few options for another effective disguise on such short notice. So mustache it was.

He sighed, and dumped the sad remnants of his beard into the hotel bathroom trash. Even with a towel to catch most of it, there was still hair all over the sink. Steve resolved to leave a big tip for housekeeping.

“So, this’ll do, right?” he prompted, stepping past Natasha back into the hotel room to fetch the rest of his disguise: a baggy, cheap suit that Natasha assured him made him look schlubby. Sam, sitting on one of the beds, recoiled the second he saw Steve.

“That’s not a mustache, that’s a copstache,” he said, revulsion clear on his face.

“What? What makes a mustache a copstache? Was Bucky’s mustache a copstache?” asked Steve.

“No, Bucky had a Flanders ‘stache going. Whole different vibe.” Sam waved a hand around Steve’s face with a grimace. “This? This is a copstache. Jesus, I can barely look at you.”

“You’re being dramatic,” said Steve, and stroked his mustache, to Natasha and Sam’s visible disgust. Steve pulled on the ill-fitting suit jacket. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

The sooner they were done, the sooner Steve could shave this thing off and go back home to Bucky. It had been nearly two weeks as it was, and almost-nightly phone calls were an inadequate substitute for actually being with Bucky.

The mission was simple intel gathering, at Maria Hill and Fury’s request. They suspected there was a HYDRA sleeper cell in Kansas City, possibly even embedded in the FBI’s field office there, and they needed someone to plant bugs and snoop around. So, supplied with what he was assured was an airtight and bulletproof FBI cover, Steve was going in as Agent Michael Wright from the Helena, Montana field office, ostensibly in Kansas City to interview for a transfer. Natasha had insisted on Steve having some sort of disguise that wasn’t just a beard and slightly longer hair than people were used to seeing on Captain America. So now Steve had the haircut of man twenty years older, and a copstache to match. Bucky was going to be horrified. Or he wouldn’t be able to stop laughing. One or the other.

Sam and Natasha were on standby just in case Steve got made, but his fake FBI ID held up through security, and the Kansas City field office welcomed him with open arms, more or less. Also they were definitely a HYDRA sleeper cell. He sent an encrypted group text to Sam and Natasha saying just that when he managed to duck into a bathroom.

_Are you sure, they could just be fascist feds_ Sam texted back. _Have any of them heil hydra’d u._

_No, it’s just a feeling I’m getting_ , Steve said. _Also every single person in this office is white_.

_Get that virus I gave you into their systems_ , _then get out,_ said Natasha, and Steve left the bathroom to do just that. 

He asked the definitely-a-HYDRA-agent who was showing him around if he could use one of the office computers to check his email, because “it’s just such a pain to type out an actual email on these tiny phones, you know?” and he kept up the dumb patter until the agent’s attention wandered and Steve could plug in the little flash drive Natasha had given him. Steve typed up a fake email in Special Agent Michael Wright’s fake FBI email account, and kept an eye on the progress bar of Natasha’s program. 

“Field office in Montana falling apart without you?” asked the definitely-a-HYDRA-agent snidely.

Shit. Steve didn’t really know what the hell FBI agents even did in Montana. “Yeah, uh—moose.”

“What?”

“Moose. Smuggling. Uh, across state lines. And into Canada. Working on busting a major moose smuggling ring.”

He typed _moose moose moose sure hope there are actual moose in Montana_ into the email.

“No shit? What the hell do people smuggle moose for?”

“The antlers. And the meat.” Steve glanced at the progress bar on Natasha’s virus program ticking on past 70%, and kept typing. “You ever had moose meat?”

“No, what’s it taste like?”

“Horse. Only—” Steve faltered, then recovered. “Smoother.”

“You’ve had horse meat?”

Finally, the program finished, and Steve covered for pulling out the flash drive by clicking the mouse with far more force than necessary.

“Getting real close to blowing that smuggling case wide open!” he said instead of any answer about horse meat. Though he _had_ had horse meat. During the war, and probably from dodgy hot dogs in the 30s too. “So is SSA Martins available to speak with me yet?

“Oh yeah. Let me take you to her office.”

From there, Steve just had to fake his way through a pseudo job interview, until a call from “Montana” about a break in his case gave him an out to leave. He took a Lyft to the airport—the driver unable to conceal her wince of horror at his mustache, jesus, was it that bad—then roamed around the terminal for a while to shake any possible tails, before walking right back out to be picked up by Sam.

“Did Natasha get what we need?” asked Steve.

Sam nodded as he pulled out of the terminal. “Yeah, sent it over to Rhodes already, as a leak from an ‘anonymous whistleblower.’ Colonel Rhodes will get his HYDRA task force on it.”

“Alright. We’ll stick around here for another day, just in case HYDRA gets tipped off. Wheels up tomorrow,” said Steve, and pulled out his phone to text Bucky. 

_Should be back tomorrow afternoon in time for date night! Call you tonight._ Bucky was still teaching, so Steve was unlikely to get a text back for a while.

“You just wanna go fuck up those Nazi bikers,” said Sam.

Steve didn’t bother to deny it. “I think I got the non-Nazi bikers on my side. If I could just go back there—”

“Jesus christ, are you using your Captain America voice? Do not use your Cap voice with that mustache, oh my god. Also you’re not going back to that biker bar.”

“All it’ll take is one bar fight, then the cops will come in and hopefully separate the Nazi chaff from the normal biker wheat—”

“No. I _will_ tell your boy that you’re this close to joining a biker gang, and he _will_ come drag your ass back to Cleveland,” threatened Sam, then shook his head. “The things you never learn about Captain America in school.” 

* * *

Steve did not go back to the biker bar that night. He took second watch for monitoring all communications out of the HYDRA-FBI field office, because he was a responsible team leader, _Sam_ , and HE called Bucky because he was a good best friend/boyfriend/life partner. 

“Hey, mission go okay?”

“Yeah, it went fine. No problems, should be back tomorrow afternoon if the flight’s on time. Hey, are there moose in Montana?”

“What?”

“Are there moose in Montana. It felt like the right thing to say at the time, but now I’m second-guessing myself. I mean, it didn’t blow my cover today, so I’m sure it’s fine.”

“What do moose—you know what, never mind. Yeah, there are moose in Montana.”

“How do you know that?”

“Google.”

There was a moment of silence. “You’re not gonna ask?”

“No, Stephen-with-a-ph, I will _not_ ask. Jesus christ,” said Bucky, sounding thoroughly disgusted. Steve grinned, and waited. Bucky didn’t disappoint. “What could moose in Montana _possibly_ have to do with your cover—”

“My cover was Special Agent Michael Wright, from the Helena, Montana field office. I said I was working on a moose smuggling case back in Montana.”

“Of course. A moose smuggling case. Isn’t that something Fish and Game would handle? Or the local—you know what, never mind. I’m not encouraging this nonsense. It’s a miracle you ever maintain a cover.”

“Oh yeah? Must be a saint then, because I’ve kept up _plenty_ of covers—”

“Uh huh, sure thing, Saint Steven of the Dumbfucks. Let me know if your flight ends up running late, ‘cause date night starts at 1800 sharp.”

A thrill of simultaneous anticipation and foreboding shivered down his spine. Two weeks felt like a long time to be apart from Bucky nowadays, and Steve felt the separation most keenly when there was no urgent mission to distract him. Phone calls and texts were nice, but they were no substitute for Bucky himself.

He only hoped Bucky didn’t have anything elaborate planned for date night. If it were Steve’s turn, he’d go home with takeout for a living room picnic that would quickly turn into welcome-home sex. As far as Steve was concerned, that was totally a winning date night. Bucky almost certainly had other, better plans though. Which, Steve had to admit, was probably why Bucky was winning the unofficial-but-totally-official date night competition so far.

“We don’t have to do anything special,” tried Steve.

“Oh really?” said Bucky, his voice dropping to a warm rumble. “A forfeit’s the same as a win for me, sweetheart.”

Steve blushed, and failed to steel his spine against an automatic shiver of pleasure. Goddammit. He cleared his throat and powered past it. 

“Come on! This isn’t a forfeit, I’m just saying, I’ve been gone for a couple weeks, we can stay in…”

“Uh uh. My turn for date night, and I’m keeping up my record, Steve, I’m winning date night again.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll see. Am I not even gonna get a hint about what we’re doing tomorrow night?”

“Nope.”

* * *

The night passed without incident, no one in the HYDRA-FBI office apparently the wiser to Steve’s infiltration, so take that, Bucky, Steve’s cover was _great_. An idea took shape in his mind. Ha, he would _show_ Bucky how great his cover was.

“You’re not shaving that thing off?” asked Sam in the morning. They were all in Steve and Sam’s hotel room, pooling together their continental breakfast hauls and finishing up their packing.

“He should keep it for now if he doesn’t want to get hassled for autographs and selfies at the airport,” said Natasha, pragmatic as always.

That was a good idea, actually, but it wasn’t why Steve hadn’t shaved off the mustache yet.

Sam grinned and made finger guns at Natasha. “Yeah, alright, that’s why you’re the spy, huh,” he said. She threw a jam packet at him, and Sam batted it away with a laugh. “Bet you’re gonna try to rush home and shave that thing off before Bucky sees it then.” 

“I don’t know, maybe I’ll keep it,” said Steve.

Sam and Natasha chorused an eerily synced and flat, “No.”

“Creepy,” muttered Steve, and took the last danish as he eyed Sam and Natasha suspiciously. 

“What, are you trying to get back at Barnes for his mustache? It’s not like he’s Sam, a mustache isn’t going to fool him into not recognizing you,” said Natasha.

“Hey! Uncalled for! I can totally recognize Steve even with a copstache!”

“And yet, Bucky’s Flanders ‘stache proved too much for you,” said Steve. “And no, I’m not trying to get _back_ at him, really…”

He knew Bucky would recognize him no matter what. If Bucky could recognize him after he’d practically doubled in height and size, and while Bucky was half-delirious on a creepy Nazi lab table no less, some facial hair wasn’t going to prove much of an obstacle. But okay, maybe, just maybe, the real goal was to throw a mustache-shaped wrench in Bucky’s probably exquisitely romantic and date night-winning plans. At this point, Steve was behind enough in date night wins that he wasn’t above a bit of harmless sabotage to even the score.

“It’s just—he made some crack about me being awful at keeping up a cover, so…” Steve finished. Natasha squinted at him and hummed dubiously. “What? I did great this time!”

“Of course you did, Steve. Maybe Barnes will believe you since he didn’t see the ‘fake’ email I did.  You know, the one you sent to the ‘Montana field office’ that said, and I quote, ‘moose moose moose.’”

Natasha’s use of finger quotes there felt frankly unnecessary. Sam stared at him, shaking his head. 

“Are there even any moose in Montana?” he asked.

“Yes there are!”

* * *

Date night hadn’t _started_ as a competition.

Date night had started for the simple reason that Steve and Bucky had skipped straight past dating to being more or less married. Which, honestly, was fine with Steve. He had everything he wanted with Bucky: they were best friends, they lived together, and they were _together_ -together too. Steve didn’t need to be courted, and he didn’t need romance. What they had now was more than Steve had ever even dreamed of having, and it was more than enough.

Bucky’d had his own ideas on the matter though. 

* * *

_A little over a month after blowing both their covers and finally getting together, they’ve settled into an easy morning routine: a quick breakfast together before Bucky heads out for work, and Steve goes out for his morning run. School will be out soon, or Steve will have more missions, and the routine will change, but for now, they have this welcome slice of domestic stability._

_“You’re free on Friday night, right?” Bucky asks while he waits at the kitchen counter for the toaster to spit out his bagel. Steve squeezes past him to refill his coffee mug._

_“Yeah, free for what?”_

_“I’m taking you out. Wear something nice.”_

_The toaster pops Bucky’s bagel out, and Bucky pulls the slices free with no care for how hot they are; he’s using his metal hand. He immediately starts slathering both halves of the bagel in peanut butter. Sticking peanut butter on just about everything is a new culinary habit of Bucky’s, and Steve’s not sure he approves. He takes a sip of coffee to keep from making any dire comments about peanut butter being an affront to bagels, then mentally backtracks to what Bucky’s just said._

_“Wait, what? Why?”_

_“‘Cause we’re going to a halfway decent restaurant. You don’t need to wear a tie, but, you know, put on a shirt other than one of your tiny t-shirts,” says Bucky, then takes a bite out of his disgusting peanut butter bagel._

_“They’re not tiny—” Steve objects, then shuts up at Bucky’s pointed look towards his chest. “You love it. And why are we going out?”_

_Bucky swallows his mouthful of peanut butter and bagel. “We’re going out on a date, Steve.”_

_“You don’t need to take me out on a date, Buck, I’m pretty much a sure thing.”_

_“Oh yeah? Good to know,” Bucky says, crowding him against the kitchen counter to give him a smiling, peanut butter flavored kiss. It’s not, Steve supposes, a strictly bad taste, and he almost chases Bucky’s lips when he pulls away. “But I still wanna take you out.”_

_“Don’t tell me you miss those horribly awkward double dates you used to drag me on.”_

_Maybe Bucky doesn’t remember them, but Steve does. Vividly. Some of them had ended up being fun, sure, but mostly, not even Bucky’s charm could rescue Steve’s end of a double date from beaching in the shallows of awkward small talk._

_“This’ll be the first time we can go out on a date, a real date, just us. As, you know. Uh. Boyfriends.” Bucky rolls his eyes at himself and wrinkles his nose. “Jesus. I sound like one of my students. As...partners? Anyway, I wanna take you on a real date, we kinda...skipped past all that.”_

_Bucky stuffs another bite of bagel into his mouth, and Steve grins._

_“Awww, you wanna court me?” The idea has some charm, Steve has to admit._

_Bucky shakes his head with mock disapproval. “You said you were a sure thing, we’re too late for courting. But it’d be nice to have date nights. I…kinda miss going out, you know?”_

_Now Bucky’s looking away, picking at the peanut butter-laden bagel on his plate. It’s a display of nerves that makes Steve’s heart go about as warm and gooey as the damned peanut butter that’s about to ooze off the bagel. Steve pulls Bucky into a loose embrace, and Bucky abandons his bagel to step close to Steve, his hands light on Steve’s waist._

_“Yeah, okay, I’ll go on a date with you,” Steve says, and earns a pleased, slightly shy smile from Bucky._

_“Great,” says Bucky, and kisses him on the cheek. “Get ready next door. I’ll pick you up at seven.”_

* * *

That first date night had ended up being just...really nice. Sweet and uncomplicated, nothing fancy, just the promised dinner out, then a walk afterward, and for all that he and Bucky had known each other for decades, it had still felt like a real first date. They were still, after all, getting to know who they were in this new time, with these new lives. At the end of the night, after they’d tumbled into bed together, Bucky had asked, _same time next week_? And Steve had said, _yeah, but let me take you out_.

So the next week, Steve had taken Bucky out to a movie at one of the local parks, where, when the weather was nice enough, they set up a big inflatable screen outdoors and let people picnic while they watched a movie. The movie was fun, just the right kind of pulpy nonsense to delight Bucky, and Steve got to cross _Jurassic Park_ off his too-long list of 20 th century catch up. But even if the movie had been terrible, Steve would have counted the date a success for the way Bucky had kept his arm around Steve’s shoulders or waist, for the way he’d pressed in close and warm against him, and the way he’d thrown his head back and laughed when Steve had presented him with their dessert for the night: grocery store cupcakes very obviously meant for a child’s birthday party, given the garish dinosaur decorations on them.

Date nights really _should_ have continued on like that, both of them taking turns taking each other out on the kind of nice, normal date every other couple went on. And to be fair, their dates _were_ still normal. Mostly. 

* * *

Here was how it had happened: after Steve’s fourth disastrous turn at date night in a row—a couples’ cooking class that had ended in an oil fire, two ruined pans, an evacuated building, a visit from the fire department, and absolutely no edible food—Bucky had laughed and pulled Steve in for a conciliatory kiss and a hug. 

_“Aww, you’re really not winning date night, huh?” Bucky asks, eyes sparkling._

_Steve stiffens. “Winning? I wasn’t aware it was a competition.”_

_“It’s not!”_

_“Then what did you mean?” Steve asks, pulling back to squint suspiciously at Bucky._

_“Nothing! It’s just a thing my kids say. Like, ‘I’m winning calculus today,’ when they answer a few questions right or whatever.”_

_Steve lets that pass. It sounds about right for Bucky’s students. God knows it at least makes more sense than the baffling use of ‘big mood’ about anything and everything. Last week, Bucky had sent Steve a photo of a crow with five french fries stuffed in its beak, followed by the words ‘big mood.’ Steve still has no idea what the hell that was supposed to convey about Bucky’s mood._

_He sighs and his shoulders slump as Bucky rubs at his back with somehow simultaneous comfort and condescension. Maybe that counts as a big mood. A losing-at-date-night big mood._

_“Okay, but I could win at date night,” he tells Bucky, trying not to pout._

_Bucky gets a distinctly pitying expression on his face. “Aww. Of course you can, buddy.”_

_“You don’t win at date night all the time!” Steve objects, and is treated to Bucky’s raised eyebrow of disbelief. He swears Bucky’s gotten better at that since becoming a teacher._

_“Don’t I though?” asks Bucky with that cocky tilt to his head that Steve loves and hates in equal measure._

_Steve, of course, has to bite gently at the inviting expanse of Bucky’s sharp jaw that said head tilt reveals, and Bucky sucks in a gratifyingly shaky breath. He mentally reviews Bucky’s last four date nights as he lays a trail of kisses to Bucky’s pulse point: an art walk through the galleries in the art district, culminating in dessert at a fancy ice cream parlor; a visit to the arboretum, where the canopy walk took them up into the trees’ heights amid the impossibly green leaves, and then they’d watched the sun set from the tower rising up over the treetops; a trip through Cleveland’s Asiatown, where they’d eaten their way through the neighborhood, trying every delicious new food whose name they didn’t recognize. Even the swing dance date had ended up being a winner, because no one had really looked askance at two men dancing together, even with how badly Steve was dancing, and because for the first time in their lives, Steve had had Bucky’s full attention in a dancehall._

_Tallied up against Steve’s rained out hike, the comedy show where Steve had ended up starting a fight with one of the racist and homophobic comedians, the pinball parlor outing where they both accidentally broke three pinball machines with their super strength before fleeing the place in shame, and now this…_

_Okay, yeah, Bucky’s winning at date night. Bucky’s absolutely winning at date night. Steve has got to step up his game._

* * *

Steve had racked up a few date night wins after that: a trip to the planetarium, a picnic at Mill Creek Falls, and one night when Bucky hadn’t felt up to going out, Steve had given him a massage, reducing him to a happy, loose-limbed puddle. But then Steve had kind of run out of ideas, and apparently, Netflix and chill never counted as winning date night, no matter how amazingly the ‘chill’ part of the night went.

_“Oh come on, how come it doesn’t count? Since when are there even rules for date night?”_

_“A winning date night is like pornography, Steve. I’ll know it when I see it. And Netflix and chill is not a winning date night. It’s more or less what we do every other night.”_

And yeah, okay, Bucky had had a point there. He’d had a point about just _knowing_ what constituted a winning date too. Winning date nights were usually pretty obvious: they were the dates that left them both feeling like this thing between them was simultaneously too huge for the world to hold, and small enough to be perfectly cradled in the slim space between their bodies; too new to take for granted, and too old to to handle carelessly. It wasn’t about some contrived idea of romance. Bucky’s winning date nights always revealed some devoted core of care and attention: trips to art galleries because he knew Steve found inspiration in them, going to the arboretum because the trees reminded Bucky of the painting Steve had given him, new foods and experiences when he knew Steve was feeling down about the future and nostalgic throwbacks to reassure him of what Bucky remembered about their past.

Most of Steve’s date nights felt like total failures in comparison, even if Bucky always laughed and kissed him afterwards, seemingly just as charmed and delighted by Steve’s failed attempts as he was by Steve’s successes. So it didn’t sting too badly, to so thoroughly lose the unofficial-but-sort-of-official date night competition.

Steve was still going to try to even the score a little though. 

* * *

Getting Bucky flowers was supposed to be part of the joke. _I’m doing this ironically_ , Steve told himself, because date nights were one thing, but Steve and Bucky weren’t in a we-buy-each-other-flowers kind of relationship. They bought each other _practical_ gifts, like knives and new paintbrushes and soft sweaters. No, these flowers were just a way to cover up Steve’s mustache for a few key seconds. These were _prank_ flowers. 

But now, standing in front of the grocery store’s surprisingly nice flower selection, Steve found himself seriously considering which flowers Bucky would like best. Daisies? Sunflowers? Roses? Steve rejected the white roses and lilies as being too funereal. The sunflowers were cheerful, but too garish. And the orchids were lovely, but they were all potted, and their smaller blooms wouldn’t serve Steve’s purpose of covering up his face. There were mixed bouquets too, pretty and bright, but those seemed somehow generic.

A grocery store employee came up to him with a smile. “Can I help you, sir? Are you waiting to have a balloon filled?” she asked, already moving toward the small display of flat, shiny mylar balloons with HAPPY BIRTHDAY and CONGRATULATIONS emblazoned on them.

“Oh, no. I’m just trying to decide on some flowers.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“A prank that’s turning into an actual romantic gesture,” muttered Steve, looking grimly at a giant bouquet of what had to be two dozen blood red roses.

“What?”

“Just a present! For my partner. I’ve been away for a couple weeks, wanted to surprise him.”

“Well, you can’t go wrong with roses,” she said, gesturing at the red roses. There was something about their uniform color that was somehow overwhelming in such a large bouquet.

“Do you have any bouquets with more than one color?”

“Oh, no, sorry, but you can get the half-dozen bouquets and make your own bigger bouquet?”

Which was how Steve found himself in the grocery store parking lot, painstakingly putting together three separate bouquets of yellow, red, and peach-colored roses into one giant bouquet, carefully alternating colors for maximum aesthetic effect. The end result was worthy of an actual florist, in Steve’s not at all biased opinion.

He hoped Bucky would like the flowers.

* * *

_Can you come get the door, it’s me_ , he texted Bucky, then he positioned the flowers just under his nose and rang the doorbell. It only took a few seconds before he heard Bucky heading towards the door.

“Steve?” he said through the still-closed door. “Did you lose your key—”

“Hi honey,” Steve said when Bucky opened the door. 

Bucky rolled his eyes at the flowers, but his smile was soft and pleased as he stepped aside to let Steve in, already reaching out a hand to him, probably to pull him in for a welcome-home kiss. It was the perfect moment. Steve lowered the flowers.

Bucky literally yelped and leapt back into the hallway. “What the _fuck_ is that thing on your _face_ —”

Steve closed the door, smiling wildly. Which probably looked creepy with this mustache, judging from Bucky’s expression of hilarious, wide-eyed horror. 

“Aww, Buck, I didn’t know you hated roses so much—”

“The roses are fine,” said Bucky, still backing into the hallway towards the living room. “That caterpillar on your lip though…”

“Oh come on, it’s not worse than your old mustache,” said Steve as he followed Bucky. He contemplated throwing the roses aside and tackling Bucky for an I-haven’t-seen-you-in-two-weeks grapple/hug.

“I didn’t think it was possible, but oh, it is. It really, really is. Holy shit. And what did you do to your _hair_?”

“It was all for my cover! Which, I think you can admit now, was _great_.”

“Oh jesus—fine, yes, you are a master, moose-smuggler-catching spy, your disguises are unparalleled, now go _shave that thing off_ , because I cannot kiss you with that thing, I just can’t.”

“But Bucky, what happened to true love?” Steve asked, then threw the roses onto the coffee table and pounced, gently, before Bucky could reach the couch. They hit the carpet with Steve wrapped around a laughing Bucky.

“I love you no matter what, but I think you just found the literal one grooming choice that makes you less attractive to me,” said Bucky, and then he clamped his legs around Steve’s waist and rolled them over so he was on top. Steve groaned, his dick taking real interest in this turn of events. Bucky smiled down at him. “Thank you for the flowers, now please get rid of that thing so we can go out.”

Steve blinked up at Bucky with exaggerated innocence. “Oh, we’re going out for date night?” 

Bucky narrowed his eyes down at Steve and pressed his weight down on him with a very appealing combination of menace and intent. Despite his best efforts to stay focused on the task at hand, he went shivery and boneless under Bucky’s steady, heavy weight.

“Yeah…” said Bucky, suspicious now.

“But if I shave, then my cover will be blown. I’ll look too much like Cap.” Steve arranged his face into an appropriately sad expression.

Bucky, gently, put his entire hand over Steve’s face and said, in a soft, tender murmur, “Stop. You look like a muppet when you make that face,” then he burst into a fit of giggles. 

Steve ignored this admittedly delightful sight and sound, and held fast to his plan, though he couldn’t resist reaching up to fondly brush Bucky’s hair out of his eyes. 

“Guess that means I have to keep the mustache if we’re going out!”

“Oh, is _that_ how it is, Rogers?” Bucky shook his head in disappointment. “You dirty cheater. But okay. Date night cancelled, I’m not gonna be seen in public in the vicinity of this thing,” he said, poking at Steve’s upper lip. 

* * *

Of course, cancelled or not, Bucky still managed to win date night.

He led Steve to the bathroom, where he settled Steve on the edge of the sink counter, took out his straight razor and shaving cream, and shaved Steve’s upper lip with exquisite carefulness.

“Don’t move,” Bucky murmured, his metal hand holding Steve’s chin steady. “I don’t want to cut you.”

So Steve didn’t move, just gripped the counter with his hands, but something inside him was trembling at Bucky’s nearness and total focus, trembling like a newly bloomed flower under soft rainfall. Bucky’s eyes were a pure, twilit blue. Steve could happily spend his whole life cataloging how they shifted and changed with the light. It only took a few careful, neat swipes of the razor for the terrible mustache to fall away onto the waiting towel. Bucky set the razor down and tossed the towel aside, then cupped Steve’s face in his broad hands, ran his thumb over Steve’s lower lip. Steve let his mouth fall open, and Bucky leaned in to finally, finally kiss him.

The first light touch of his lips drew a desperate sound from Steve, and he clutched at Bucky’s waist, opened his mouth to Bucky, but Bucky moved his hand to Steve’s throat, and kept the kiss cruelly gentle. He deepened it by agonizing degrees that left Steve focusing on every minute detail: the softness of Bucky’s lips, the hammering of his pulse against Bucky’s thumb, the sounds of their breathing and the still lingering soapy smell of the shaving cream.

“I missed you,” said Bucky, when he finally pulled away, and Steve grabbed at him, kept him close.

“Please,” he said, already undone, and Bucky obliged him, leaning in again for a deep and gasping kiss.

Bucky pulled him off the counter, pulled Steve’s pants and underwear down. He gave Steve’s already hard cock a hello-there kind of stroke, then kneeled, and took Steve in his mouth.

He took it as slow as he had with the kiss, every sweep of his tongue patient and controlled, even with the tight grip Steve had on his hair, until Steve was lost and begging and shaking. When Bucky took him deeper, Steve came in one inevitable, melting rush, a warmth like sunshine easing up and down along his spine to pool in the general vicinity of his heart, where it throbbed happily.

Before Steve could properly recover, Bucky lifted him up and carried him over to their bed, and okay, yeah, Steve knew where this was going. He spread his legs, and Bucky smiled. Steve didn’t know what the hell Bucky had originally planned for date night, but whatever it had been, this was undoubtedly better.

* * *

Some hours later, Steve patted at a post-coitally drowsy Bucky’s messy hair.

“Sorry if I ruined your plans, Buck.” Bucky huffed out a laugh against Steve’s shoulder. “No, really! I’m sure you had something nice planned, and I really do love when you take me out—”

Bucky shut him up with a kiss. “It’s alright. Think we can call this one a draw.” They kissed some more, lazy and soft, until Bucky said, “I’m definitely still winning date night though.”

Steve hit him with a pillow.


End file.
